Remembrances Of Things Past
by Noxialis
Summary: - Sequel to 'Raphael' - When the new 'Supernatural' books are released, Garcia convinces Reid to join the fandom. What he finds, however, are too many coincidences for him to ignore.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Remembrances Of Things Past

**Summary:** Spencer Reid remembers his time spent with Tobias Hankel, but is more occupied with his mysterious saviours. When a chance comes for him to finally find out what really happened, he latches on with all he has, leading him into a world he never knew existed.

**Notes:** Takes place early season four for Criminal Minds, and mid season six for Supernatural, after Sam's soul is back, but before 6x15. But since Raphael was killed in the last story, the drama in Heaven is much less.

I know the time line might be a bit messed up, but I didn't want the Apocalypse hanging over their heads while this was going on. Bear with it.

I own nothing.

* * *

"_Tell me who dies."_

"_I won't do it."_

"_Choose and do God's will."_

"_No."_

"_My name is Castiel."_

"_God's will."_

"_We're going to get you back to civilization."_

"_My name is Castiel."_

Reid woke up with a gasp, his eyelids fluttering open and staying wide as they adjusted to the darkness of his room. He blinked a few times to get the dry feeling out of his eyes and the afterimage of the imposing figure named Raphael out of his brain. He took a few shuddering breaths to calm himself, and pulled the sheets he had kicked away back towards his body.

He had dreamt about that night on and off for the last year and a half. His nightmares were filled with the scent of burning raw, disgusting meat, and the click of an empty barrel spinning closer to his death, of drugs pumping through his veins offering the only solace they could, but with a twisted churning feeling under his skin, irritating his brain. He dreamt of a piercing gaze and gravelly tones and being cradled in old leather seats with the roar of an engine humming in his ears.

He had searched his hardest for the identities of the three men who had saved him, but with only one name to go with a face, it was tough. He thought it wouldn't be too hard, since he doubted Castiel was a common name – _the name of the Angel of Thursday_, his well-read mind supplied before he could stop himself – but even Garcia couldn't find anyone anywhere she was legally allowed to go that went by the name Castiel. The faces of the two other men were annoyingly familiar, but with the Dilaudid still floating in his system at the time of his rescue he hadn't thought to take note of their features.

The team had called every hospital in Georgia and the surrounding area, giving Reid's description and asking for a call as soon as he showed up. Reid himself was getting settled into a hospital bed, a doctor checking him all over while Reid relayed what had been done to him physically and that he was an FBI agent and his team needed to be called. He drifted off into a morphine-induced sleep and awoke hours later to see his team standing over him, looks of relief passing over their faces when he opened his eyes.

They asked him questions. He directed them as best he could towards the cabin in the middle of nowhere that still held Tobias's bullet-riddled body. He described the three men who rescued him to the best of his ability, pointing out whatever small trait his addled mind had been able to pick up, but it was largely unhelpful. They all searched, knowing how suspicious it was that the three men just so happened across him, even if they did rescue him. But other cases demanded their attention, and so the search was put aside.

Time passed. Life moved on.

Dreams persisted.

Reid sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands, taking a glance at the clock. It wasn't too long until he would have to wake up anyway, so he showered and dressed and ate breakfast, stopping into a Starbucks to grab his morning coffee on his way to work. He had a small mountain of paperwork to get through, and he was pretty certain Prentiss had slipped him a few of her files again. Not that he minded, since it wasn't hard work, and he knew she'd take them back without a fuss if he asked her.

He settled himself behind his desk for another long day writing, and soon fell into a smooth rhythm of scrawling words, typing letters and light thinking, interrupted by the occasional sip of his coffee. He took a small lunch break and suffered through the usual teasing from Morgan about his next cup of coffee, but he didn't feel like telling the man about his restlessness the dreams caused, and got back to work.

The worst part was not _knowing_, he figured, since a lot of his distress came from that. He wasn't a know-it-all, but Reid liked knowledge. He never felt good when someone else knew something important he didn't know, though in his line of work, that was often the case when a suspect had a victim held somewhere, or there was a body to be found, or something else along those lines.

He heard a squeal coming from the vicinity of Garcia's office and raised his head to look, noticing the others doing the same. Morgan had cocked an eyebrow and silently gotten up to check on her.

"What's up, baby girl?" he asked, and Reid was close enough that he could hear their conversation.

"Oh, just some of _the_ most fabulous news I've gotten through the wonders of the world wide web!" Garcia gushed, and Reid could just picture her face lighting up with a bright grin. He absentmindedly continued his work, keeping enough attention that he didn't make any mistakes, but curious as to what had gotten Garcia so excited.

"Well, don't keep me in suspense."

"_Supernatural_!" she squealed, "by Carver Edlund! It had been cancelled, but-but-but _now_," Reid could see a bit of her in the doorway, jumping up and down excitedly. "It's coming back! The author is doing a mass release of all the books he's written since _No Rest For The Wicked_!"

There was a small noise from Morgan while he processed this information. "_Supernatural_... Hey, isn't that the thing you wanted to go to some convention for a while ago?"

"Yes," Garcia said, fuelled by Morgan's recognition. "And while it is a good thing I didn't go, what with the murders that happened and all that, I was severely unhappy with missing it, especially since I have no one here to share this _amazing_ series with!"

There was a short silence, then Morgan backed up. "No can do, baby girl," he said with a little laughter. "Not my type of thing."

"How do you know it's not your type of thing if you haven't read it?"

"I read a few chapters, Garcia. Not my type of thing." There was a small silence, then Reid could practically _hear_ the grin in Morgan's voice. "Why don't you ask Reid?"

Reid spun around in his seat at the sound of his name, his mouth automatically opening to say an inelegant, "Huh?"

Garcia looked very hopeful, and Morgan was grinning at him. "He can read the books a lot faster than I can, so you don't have to worry about spoiling him."

"Please, Reid? I really need someone to talk to about this. Chatting on the forums is great, but nothing beats squealing face-to-face."

Reid sighed and scratched the back of his neck. It wouldn't take long, that was correct, and he supposed it wouldn't hurt to be a little more caught-up in pop culture. "I guess I could..."

Garcia squeaked in delight and rushed to his desk to give him a hug, awkwardly shoving her bosom into the man's neck. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she crowed, squeezing Reid tightly until she let go. "I have a few volumes here, including the first few, and we can swing by my place so you can get the rest after work. The new volumes are released next week and I promise you can read them first as long as you don't tell me anything about what happens!"

"O-okay," Reid said, a little overwhelmed and off-guard, though that was nothing new when it came to Garcia. Morgan had retreated back to his desk and Prentiss was giving him a sort of sympathetic smirk, but Garcia looked too happy for Reid to back out now. It wouldn't be that big a problem.

Garcia brought him the books, numbered one through four, and Reid set them on the side of the desk to read after he had finished his work. It didn't take too long for him to get through all his reports, his curiosity about the series that had captured Garcia's attention lending him enough drive to finish everything a little quicker. He leaned back in his chair and took the first book from the pile.

_'Supernatural'_ it read. _By Carver Edlund_. A painted pair of muscled men graced the cover under a moonlit night, with a dark car by the house in the background.

He sped through the tale of two brothers investigating a vengeful spirit, searching for clues to their father's disappearance and saving people along the way. The writing was a little flowery and amateur at times, and Reid saw signs of someone simply writing to get these ideas out there, then going back and trying to make them more interesting during a second reading, but it caught his interest after a while.

The second book they went after a wendigo, the third a demon. When it was time to start packing up, Reid was halfway through _'Bloody Mary'_, and Garcia was grinning almost maniacally at him. She swooped in and ushered him to her car, offering him a ride home and the promise of more books. Reid finished the fourth book before they reached her house, and accepted the twenty-odd more books.

He read a few more after dinner and before bed, stopping at _'Home'_ and setting the other books aside for the next days. There was no rush to read them, since the new books weren't released until next week, though Garcia would likely be checking in on his progress every day.

Reid sighed and shrugged under the covers, closing his eyes and letting himself slip into sleep.

_"Tell me who dies."_

_"No."_

_Raphael took out his gun, the single bullet placed inside a chamber and spun. "Choose and do God's will."_

_"No."_

_He flinched as the trigger was pulled, an empty chamber this time._

_"Choose."_

_"I won't do it."_

_Raphael's finger twitched again, and the sound of bangs rang in his ears. He flinched and screwed his eyes shut, bracing himself for the inevitable pain, but the sounds of guns wouldn't stop. They kept echoing in the wooden room, and he heard a guttural groan as Raphael/Charles/Tobias Hankel slammed into the floorboards, never to rise again. He opened his eyes and stared in disbelief at his saviours, the tall brunette reloading his shotgun and staring at the corpse as though it might jump up and attack again, the shorter man in the leather jacket slowly lowering his pistol, while the man in the trenchcoat strode confidently towards Reid in the chair._

_Then he experienced a bit of dream logic. As he looked into their faces, he knew they were Sam and Dean. Hunters. Saviours. His dream followed the same path as his memories, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything about their identities. What was a name, really? He had just been reading those _Supernatural_ books too soon before bed and it was affecting his subconscious. He could have prattled on about a number of facts and studies done on dreams and sleep patterns, but he was loathe to disrupt the comfortable silence of safety within the car._

_He was safe. That was all that mattered._

He woke up gently, easing out of the dream with a hazy fluidity that hadn't come with previous dreams about that incident. Then again, Reid mused as he pushed the covers away from his body, that had been the most pleasant dream about his kidnapping he had ever had. Not that it was saying much, since even the most mundane of his dreams about the event were filled with the same stale terror he had experienced in the past.

He went through his morning routine, and brought the next few books to read as he rode the subway to work, and the same on his way back home. By the next day he was finished _'No Rest For The Wicked'_ and chatting with Garcia as she debated which brother she liked more and Reid complimented the vast number of creatures and the various methods they dealt with them. They agreed that it was best that they were publishing more books, seeing as how Dean being sent to Hell was the biggest downer ending they could have come up with.

"It's a good way of showing just how much of a brother complex Dean has," Reid mentioned during their lunch break, days before the next series of books would be coming. "Since he would do literally everything to save Sam. There's not much more one can do than sacrifice their soul and let themselves be tortured for all eternity, all for the sake of one person, even if it's a very selfish thing to do."

"Selfish? Honey, it was selfless! Dean couldn't live without Sam!"

"And now Sam's going to have to live without Dean," he pointed out, hearing Morgan passing by and muttering about how he should have seen this coming. "It's been shown how codependent these two are, obsessively so, and Dean's death will be even harder on Sam than Sam's would have been for Dean, because he knows that Dean is in Hell. If Sam had stayed dead, he would most likely be in Heaven, though there could've been a chance that he would have become a spirit that Dean would have had to hunt."

"I think I read a fanfic of that," Garcia muttered thoughtfully. "It was very sad... Do you want me to send you a link?"

"No, I'm fine."

True to her word, when the books came out, Garcia let him read them first. They picked up the box set she had pre-ordered as she gave him a ride home from work, and he promised her he would have the first few returned to her the following morning.

He settled down on his bed after dinner and opened _'Lazarus Rising'_, reading as Dean was resurrected from Hell with no idea what happened, his reunion with Bobby and Sam, and the suggestion that they see a psychic to find out what pulled him out of Hell.

Then he stopped, because he wasn't sure if he had been reading that seance right.

Castiel.

The name of the Angel of Thursday.

The same name one of his rescuers gave him.

It was too much of a coincidence for Reid, and his body gave an involuntary rolling shiver down his spine. He had been having dreams about his kidnapping more often than usual lately, and so the foggy memories were still fresh in his head.

He pressed on, reading about the demons in the diner, and the darker turn Sam seemed to be taking, while Dean and Bobby summoned up Castiel. A dark-haired man in a trenchcoat, walking in graceful, purposeful strides with the air of an eternal being that could stare into your very soul. An angel of the Lord, he claimed, and Reid couldn't help but compare him to the man he had seen in the shack and think that didn't sound too far off.

He wondered if he would still have those thoughts if he hadn't been having all those dreams recently. The descriptions, of both Castiel and the brothers, seemed spot on. The personalities and mannerisms seemed to match up, though he had to wonder about the relationship between Castiel and the brothers if he really was riding around in an Impala with them, saving young geniuses from serial killers.

He couldn't help himself. He delved into the next book, reading page after page, until he reached the end and picked up the book following that one. He read about the Seals, about Sam's descent into darkness, about the other angels and the divide between them. He read about Castiel interrogating Raphael and felt a chill. He read about the brothers' struggle against destiny and Castiel's growing humanity. Then he closed the book on the epilogue of _'Swan Song'_ and realized he should really get to sleep.

His mind raced, though, thinking of various news stories he recalled watching about strange phenomenon. He remembered seeing a news story about a brilliant white light erupting from St Mary's Convent in Ilchester, Maryland that was chalked up to a terrorist bombing. The rapid spread of swine flu. The couple that ate each other to death. So many random killings.

It triggered memories in his head, memories of reading reports and files of a pair of brothers named Sam and Dean, of Agent Henriksen, killed in an explosion just like the one in the books.

"It doesn't mean anything," Reid mumbled to himself as he tugged off his sweater and pulled on a pair of pyjama pants. "The author probably just did a lot of research to tie his book together to reality. He probably wanted his readers to remember some of those news reports and think of his book. Rather good marketing strategy, really. Caught me up in it, at least."

He continued mumbling to himself as he slowly drifted into sleep, not wanting to acknowledge the irrational part of his mind that said the book was all true, that he was really rescued by these hunters of the supernatural, that the man who tried to kill him a year and a half ago might not have been a man at all.

It was just a silly notion caught in his brain and stuck there through a lack of sleep. There was no way it was true.

"_My name is Castiel."_

Right?


	2. Chapter 2

Note: Since I don't think they ever gave a state that Kripke's Hollow was in, I decided to stick it in Kansas. Because why not.

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

Reid woke up the next morning still haunted by the 'what-ifs' of the previous night. He thought some sleep would dispel the ridiculous notions, but they lingered still. He longed to talk with Garcia about this, to ask whether or not she thought this was too much of a coincidence or not. But he refrained from doing so. He dropped off all the books into Garcia's den before she got there, then buried himself in his work.

At lunch she caught up to him.

"Soooo," she drawled out in a voice practically squeaking in excitement. "What did you think? Were they good? You look tired, did you read them all last night?"

"Slow down, Garcia," Reid laughed, trying to remain natural. "Yes, I read them all last night, though it didn't take _that_ long. And I thought you didn't want me to spoil you."

She pouted a bit at this, but conceded his point and made Reid swear that as soon as she was done the series they would have a long chat about how amazing it was sure to be. As she walked away, Reid lightly bit his tongue to suppress the urge to ask her about her opinion on supernatural creatures in real life.

"You doing alright there, kid?" Morgan came up behind him, placing his hand on Reid's shoulder and looking at him with a concerned expression.

"I'm fine," Reid said quickly, not wanting Morgan to worry, but knowing he couldn't really talk to him about his concerns. "Just some dreams bugging me." It wasn't a complete lie, and Morgan bought it. His hand squeezed Reid's shoulder a little tighter before letting go and getting his own coffee from the nearby machine.

"Anything in particular?"

Reid paused for a moment, then shuffled closer and began adding sugar to his cup of coffee. "The Hankel case," he said after a moment. "And the guys who rescued me."

Morgan made a grunt of recognition. He remembered that day. Back when Reid had stopped breathing on screen and they had to watch in horror as the seconds slipped away, finally able to breathe in relief after Tobias administered CPR and they saw Reid coughing. He remembered the chill when the revolver was pointed at their youngest teammate, and the dark voice of Raphael telling him to choose a teammate to die. He remembered seeing the calculating look in Reid's eye, thinking up some plan behind the fear even as he refused and refused.

He had dreamed about the gunshots for so long after they had him back safe and sound. But those times it would be a single shot, straight through Reid's skull, and the genius's brains would splatter behind the chair, his sunken eyes wide with shock and staring into the camera, asking why they couldn't have saved him. He had gotten a handle on those dreams after a while, reassuring himself with seeing Reid's face every day, tugging on his messy hair or bumping against his shoulders, a little bit of proof that he was there, he was safe, and he wasn't going anywhere.

Morgan almost didn't want to find the guys that saved him. He wanted to thank them and express his gratitude for saving his pretty boy, but he knew that they would have to investigate them. They had known to go to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and burst in, guns blazing. They would probably have had to arrest them for the murder they committed, at the very least, though there was always the chance the jury wouldn't convict them. As far as Morgan was concerned, they got a dangerous serial killer out of their hair, saved a life, and left too little evidence for anyone to do anything about it.

That was good enough for him.

Reid knew this; Morgan had just as much told the team his feelings on the mysterious saviours in the weeks following Reid's kidnapping, back when they were mucking through whatever clues they could find. Everyone else on the team wanted to know who they were, and while Hotch had levelled an almost glare at Garcia when she said she wanted to bake them a big batch of cookies, the whole team knew that one of the first things they would do if face to face with any of those men would be to thank them.

They had done their best to find out who the men were, but they only had one man's face on camera, and Reid had supplied them with the name he had given him. But there was no one named Castiel in any of Garcia's databases, and they had no information on the other two men. Reid's description wasn't helpful enough, and they had nothing to go on. They had thought that maybe the men were accomplices or friends of Tobias who decided to turn against him, but there wasn't anything in Tobias's home or the shed that suggested anybody other than Tobias (and his alternate personalities) were there. Hotch had suggested that they might have been rival serial killers mowing down the competition, given how easily they had pumped Tobias full of lead, but there didn't seem to be any trails of bodies that linked back to them.

The men were still in the backs of everyone's minds, but they had pushed them aside for the more obvious threats, going after stalkers and killers and returning to a dangerous but manageable routine.

The team took a case the day after Reid still couldn't convince himself his imagination was simply persistent. They took the jet to Casper, Wyoming where a serial killer was raping his victims and stabbing them – an act, they later found out, which was taking place at the same time – and set up base there to catch the scourge of society. It took a few days, numerous bodies to sift through, including one found after their arrival, but they hammered out a profile that was able to narrow down the police's suspects to one man, who was promptly arrested. The group stayed overnight, then left in the morning, and Reid had been distracted enough to almost forget about Castiel.

They arrived back at Quantico, and Reid was able to have a few hours of paperwork to himself before he got a message from Garcia asking him to come into her office. He finished filling out a form and capped his pen, rising from his seat and making his way to the closed door. He slipped inside and spotted Garcia clicking through a few _Supernatural_ websites, a volume open on her lap.

"Hey, Garcia," he greeted, giving her a small finger wave when the blonde haired technician turned around in her seat.

"Hey, Reid! Look what I just finished," she sang out and held the book in her lap up, revealing the cover of _Swan Song_, the two brother reclining against the Impala, the reflection of black and fiery wings emerging from Sam's back in the windshield of the car. "I crammed at night so I could catch up to you and the rest of the internet."

"That's great," Reid said, a small smile on his face as he stuffed his hands into his pockets. They were starting to feel a little sweaty.

"I loved the apocalypse arc, and the angels! Oh my god, the _angels_! It makes sense, I mean, since they already had demons, adding angels into the mix would just make sense, and I certainly didn't expect them to be all fluffy clouds and harps, but I didn't expect so many of them to be so mean! Cas was cool, though! I loved it when he started getting more human, even though I didn't want him to Fall, so I was super happy that everything worked out in the end! It was just-just-" She succumbed to a fit of giggling squeals that Reid had to chuckle at and take a small step away from. He had experienced her fangirl glee before, but this was a scale he had never seen before, and he was sort of trapped in the room with her.

After a moment, Garcia realized that Reid was not squealing in glee with her (though she admitted that Reid never did that anyways, but he was still not as into it as he usually was) and that he seemed almost uneasy. Her smile dropped and she looked at him with soft eyes.

"Hey, is everything okay? Did you not like the ending? Did that last case hit you too hard or something?"

Reid gave her a reassuring smile that was only halfway successful, and nervously took his hands out of his pockets, trying to discretely wipe them off on his trousers. "No, no, nothing like that," he said quickly. "The ending would have been tragic without the epilogue, though I do have to wonder if Adam got the same treatment. But I was actually hoping you could look up some things for me."

Garcia smiled and placed the book down on the counter, turning back to her computers. "Sure thing, sweet cheeks. What do you need?"

"Could you check news reports at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California for November second, two thousand and five?" Garcia quirked an eyebrow, but began typing. Reid shuffled closer behind her, one hand gripping her chair as he looked at the screens. After a minute, Reid stopped her, the image of a news article about a young woman burned to death in her apartment who attended the school alongside her boyfriend.

Jessica Moore.

The article didn't mention the name of her boyfriend, but Reid knew his next date would give him all the information he needed.

"Lawrence, Kansas," he told Garcia, gripping the chair a little tighter. "Same day, but the year is nineteen eighty-three."

Garcia seemed to be catching on, because in her search, she narrowed it down to the woman burned to death herself. "Mary Winchester," she said in a wavering voice. "Married to John Winchester, leaving behind two sons, Sam and Dean... Oh my god, Reid..." She turned to look at him with wide eyes, her mind making the connection.

"It might just be a coincidence..." Reid offered weakly. "The author might have been friends with these guys and used the events that happened to them as inspiration."

They decided to test a few more dates in the books, corresponding the events written down with whatever was reported. They looked into the murders committed by the skin-walker, by the murderous family in _The Benders_, and they matched up John Winchester's death with what was written in the books. The destruction of The Roadhouse matched up, as did the death of Victor Hendriksen.

Garcia opened up the men's criminal files and Reid braced himself. They went through the crimes listed, and Garcia felt the need to provide examples from the books where they would have been charged with them. She was nervous and a little afraid, and was trying to quell the overwhelming feelings with chatter, which Reid was grateful for. He needed the time to remember the faces of the men who save him, keeping them fresh in his mind so that he would be able to once and for all settle his mind's debate.

Then Garcia brought up their pictures, and Reid had to grip her chair with both hands to keep his startled knees from buckling beneath him. He was vaguely aware that he was whispering "It's them, it's really them." while a shocked Garcia kept glancing between her computer screen and the volume of _Supernatural_ laying beside her.

There were a few moments of silence between them before Garcia turned her gaze back to Reid and asked in a small whisper, "How did you- When did you realize?"

"When I read _Lazarus Rising_," he said, his eyes firmly locked on the mug shots in front of him. They were a little younger than when he had seen them, but they had been taken years ago. "And Castiel appeared. I... It's not a common name, and the description matched up with what I remembered of the man who... untied me from the chair..." Garcia took in a gasping breath, as though she had forgotten that Castiel had been the name of one of his saviours. "I looked into it, and the descriptions of the brothers seemed to match up with the other two men, and I knew it was illogical, but I just couldn't shake the thought that maybe it was all true, especially after that dream..." He let a shaky sigh and felt Garcia's hand on his own, her thumb rubbing circles against his wrist.

"It's totally freaky," she said, her painted lips twisting up into a smile. "But it's totally understandable. Do you... Do you think all this stuff might really be true? That these kinds of monster exist, and-and we were so close to the actual frickin' Apocalypse?"

"I don't know," Reid said, not wanting to jump to any more conclusions, even if his last set of conclusions had been totally right. "But I do know I want to talk to the author."

Garcia smiled and patted his hand, turning back around in her seat. "_That_ I can give you." With a few strokes of her keyboard, Garcia figured out that Carver Edlund was a pen name, and that the author's real name was Chuck Shurley, who happened to live in a quaint little town name Kripke's Hollow in Kansas. He had attended the first ever _Supernatural_ convention last year, and would likely got to the next one, but it wasn't for a while. It wouldn't be a simple task to take some time off work to go talk to the man, especially since he never took time off unless it was enforced by a doctor. He couldn't try and interrogate the man over the phone, because it would be harder to tell if he was lying or not through voice alone.

But he had to know. He would find some way of working this out, and once he was able to tear his eyes away from the Winchester's pictures, he could see that Garcia felt the same way. She smiled confidently up at him and turned her chair around, offering her hand to him.

"Sounds like we got a mystery on our hands," she said, her voice still wavering a little, but her resolution firm. Reid smiled and shook her hand.

They would figure this out.


	3. Chapter 3

Notes: For the purposes of this fic, I won't really be touching on the Chuck=God thing. Let's just say He really liked being Chuck and decided to stay that way. And he's still dating Becky. Because Garcia needs another girl to talk slashfic with.

Also I made up the town of Holt. If there really is one, that's totally a coincidence.

* * *

CHAPTER THREE

Reid wondered how he would be able to figure out a way to get to Kripke's Hollow without raising suspicion from the team. He supposed he could give up one of his scheduled visits to his mother without telling them, and take that time to zip to Kansas, but he didn't want to do that to his mother. Even when she was out of it, Reid still enjoyed his time with his mother.

Vacation time would be suspicious. He couldn't just lie and say there was some kind of emergency, because who knew what would happen when the lie got exposed, and there was a good chance that whatever lie he used would be exposed. The downside of working with profilers.

It was sheer chance that their next case took them to Kripke's Hollow, but Reid wasn't going to let such a perfect opportunity pass by. Garcia had given him a secret smile when she was told she was coming too, something which Morgan caught and gently demanded an explanation for. Garcia told him a tale about something called a 'samlicker81' on a _Supernatural_website who mentioned taking a trip down to Kripke's Hollow to see her boyfriend, which may or may not have been true. It certainly drove Morgan to change the subject.

He wondered if they should tell the others, at least about him finding out who the men that rescued him were, but that would raise a lot of questions he wasn't sure anyone else would believe. It had taken him a string of coincidences backed by hard fact before he was willing to admit to something that might be true. And he still felt the need to confirm with the author before he would let himself think that the supernatural existed, that he had been rescued by some kind of hunters and an angel. Reid wasn't sure who would be the most likely to believe him. He couldn't imagine Hotch or Rossi believing it until face to face with a ghost or something. JJ he could see believing him, but they didn't want to risk anything.

Not yet. Not without solid proof.

They reviewed the case on the plane ride there, going over the file of four similar deaths in the small town. Four men had died in their homes, their necks slashed mercilessly and their throats clogged with razor blades.

"It's certainly sadistic," Prentiss said, looking over the images of an eviscerated neck with razor blades still jutting out. "But I don't think I see a sexual side to this."

"I agree," Hotch said, across from her, his own eyes looking through an autopsy report on the third man. "Their necks are the only areas that receive any damage. There isn't even a blow to the head to incapacitate them."

"Were there any drugs in their systems?" Morgan asked. Hotch shook his head.

"That doesn't mean there wasn't any, though. It could have been a drug that would metabolize quickly. The coroner didn't find any injection sites, though she said she would double-check."

"It's likely the unsub is someone the victims felt comfortable around, a friend or family member, or just someone obviously weaker than them," Reid added.

"All these men are rather large and fit," Prentiss said, nodding a little. "A smaller man or a woman wouldn't seem like much of a threat, which would allow the unsub the chance to inject the drug."

"All the men are rather alike," Rossi added, the folder for the latest victim in his hands. "But Vincent Carter looks like the odd man out. All the other victims are dark-haired, tanned, fit. But Carter is blonde and freckled."

"He might have been killed for a different reason in the unsub's mind... Garcia," he called out to the woman sitting in the corner of the jet, as far away from the gory images as she could be. She snapped to attention at her name. "I'd like you to start looking into Vincent Carter's life. He works at Flying Wiccan Press. You and Morgan go down there when the jet lands. JJ and Reid will go straight to the police station, check on the bodies and see if there's any more information the police have."

"Hotch," Prentiss spoke up, holding an photo of the crime scene, a close up of the bloody bed. The pillow had been shifted to the side to reveal a small leather bag, no bigger than her fist. "This was found under the pillow of the first victim, was it under any others?"

"No," Hotch said, taking the photo from her and looking at it. Reid leaned over in his seat to look at the picture. "But it would be worth it to check the other crime scenes. The police asked Andrew Calmer's wife if it was his, but she didn't recognize it."

"It looks like a hex bag," Reid mused, Hotch offering the photo for a closer inspection, which Reid quickly took.

"A hex bag? Pretty boy, have you been reading too much of that horror story?" Morgan teased, but Hotch was obviously looking for some more explanation.

"A hex bag or gris-gris bag contains a mixture of herbs other ingredients pertaining to the supernatural world placed in a piece of cloth and bound in leather. If they're intended to harm someone they would also put in a personal item belonging to the victim, like a piece of clothing, but they could also be intended for protection. It could be that Calmer was a believer in those powers, or it could be part of the unsub's signature, in which case the unsub is likely a believer in Wicca or Hoodoo."

"Well, if it were used for protection, it sure didn't do its job..." JJ muttered.

"Alright," Hotch said, taking the photo back from Reid and returning it to Prentiss. "We'll do a check-up on the other houses, see if there isn't any more of these hex bags or anything else the police may have missed."

* * *

Garcia thought she was getting a rather good end of the deal. Kripke's Hollow was too small a town to house a good airport, so they landed in Holt and parted ways, the rest of the team driving out of town to Kripke's Hollow, while Morgan took Garcia to the publishing company Carter worked at. The company was up to date and it wouldn't have been too hard to get all the information about Vincent Carter back at Quantico, but most of the information on the others in Kripke's Hollow would be paper or old software. The police force had warned JJ about their less than stellar technology, and Hotch had decided to bring Garcia to work through the information they had there.

For now, though, she was in the workplace of Vincent Carter, who just so happened to work for 'Flying Wiccan Press: Publishers of Quality Science Fiction and Graphic Novels'. It was like they were handing her a chance on a silver platter.

A short man in a blue dress shirt and gray trousers walked up to them as they entered the building. He gave them a business smile and some raised eyebrows. "Hello," he said. "My name is Tobias Lester. You must be the agents for Vincent."

"Special Agent Derek Morgan," Morgan said, flipping out his credentials. "And this is our Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia. Could you show us his workspace?"

Lester gave a short nod and motioned for them to follow him as he began walking past the receptionist, who was filing her nails and trying not to look like she wasn't interested in why there were FBI agents in her building. They took the stairs to the second floor, walked down a red and brown hallway, and opened a door with Carter's name on a plaque, entering another room with a brown and red theme.

"Vincent was one of our editors," Lester said, flipping on the light switch and waving his arm towards the wooden desk in the corner of the small room. "He was an assistant for a while, but he was promoted about a year ago."

Morgan looked around the room, taking in the literature degrees on the wall, the pictures of his family, the tall, skinny bookshelf off to the side, filled with books published by Flying Wiccan Press. Garcia settled herself in front of the computer and began flipping through Carter's files.

"He definitely took a lot of pride in his job," Morgan said softly, still looking around. Lester made a sound of agreement.

"We would go out for drinks every Friday after work, and ninety-nine percent of our conversations revolved around the latest story we were going over, the next big thing, or what author was submitting yet another piece of trash." He gave the agents a sad smile. "I was the first one his wife called to – to inform about his death. We weren't friends, _per se_, but I was the closest friend he had."

"What was he working on before his death?" Morgan asked. Garcia piped up before Lester could speak.

"_Blood Rush_, by Emilia Woodrow. He only had a few chapters to go," she added sadly, and Lester nodded.

"Megan's been assigned to finish it up."

Morgan nodded and moved to stand behind Garcia as she looked through the computer. "What else do you have there, baby girl?"

"Ah, possibly a list of every single piece of science fiction Vincent Carter has ever looked at. He's got tons of files, all organized by author, genre, medium. He's got a special folder for the bestsellers, tragically small, and – oh, look at that – a folder of black-listed authors."

"Yeah," Lester spoke from the doorway, nodding slowly. "We sometimes have a problem with amateur authors who refuse to improve their writing. We're a fairly small company, so less talented writers feel safer going to us than some of the bigger publishers. We try to be fair and help improve the writing, but some people just don't know when to stop. Vincent had some bad luck with a few of those."

"Well, that's definitely something to look into," Morgan said, giving Garcia's shoulder a quick squeeze. "Print up a list of those black-listed authors and we'll check them out as possible suspects."

"Okie-dokie!" Garcia chirped, quickly pressing a few keys and the printer behind them whirred to life.

* * *

It took a little over an hour to drive from the airport to Kripke's Hollow. JJ drove Reid towards the police station while the others parted ways, aiming to begin at the first crime scene and work their way through the others. He shifted in his seat, feeling restless in the town he knew the author of _Supernatural_resided in. He didn't plan on leaving the case to go interrogate the man about the origins of his book; he would wait until they had caught the unsub and wrapped the case up before staying behind for a few hours at most, tracking the man down and finding out what the truth was.

He could be patient. He had spent the last year and a half waiting to find out what had really happened during his kidnapping, he could wait a few more days or more. It was hard, knowing how close he was to an answer, but he would do it.

They pulled up to the police station and Reid stuffed the files back into his bag. An officer by the name of Leon Knightly greeted them when they entered. JJ introduced the both of them and they were directed into a small corner of the building.

"We're not a very big facility, so we can't offer much room, but these gruesome murders have everyone's attention, so you'll have anything you need here."

"Thank you do much," JJ said politely. The three of them walked to the corner and began looking through the files. "Do you have any new information for us?"

"No, nothing. Luckily there haven't been any more bodies, but everyone's a little on edge," Knightly said, sighing heavily and glancing around the station. The two agents glanced around as well, noting the air of weariness and tension that hovered amongst the officers. "We don't know when this guy'll strike again."

"Mm," Reid hummed, opening a box full of files. "That's true. It doesn't seem like the unsub is following any particular pattern. It's entirely likely he's killing people that he's perceived wrongs against him, which would allow for a more random time frame between kills."

"I can't decide whether that's better or worse than a pattern killer," Knightly muttered, scrubbing a hand through short brown hair. "Anyway, you mentioned on the phone wanting to look at the bodies?"

"Yes," Reid said, his back straightening as he placed the file he had been flipping through on the desk. "There's a high chance that the unsub used some kind of paralytic drug, so finding an injection site would be extremely helpful."

"Well, the coroner hasn't sent over any information yet, but she could still be looking at the bodies. Are both of you coming?"

"No," JJ said, pulling a nearby chair over and settling herself behind the desk. "I think I'll stay here, start sifting through this info, get the board set up."

Reid and Knightly bid her a short goodbye before exiting the station and driving down to the hospital, a short but silent drive. The nurse at the entrance greeted them, obviously already familiar with the police officer, and pointed them towards the nearest elevator. They rode it down to the morgue, where a small woman with short red hair and a deeply freckled face was leaning over a pair of tanned feet. She was checking in between each of the toes, her gloved fingers searching every inch before sighing in frustration.

"Dr. Caitlin Hayes," Knightly said by way of introduction, and the woman flicked her eyes up and gave the men a tight smile. "This is FBI Agent Spencer Reid."

"Pleasure," she said, wiggling her gloved fingers in a wave. "Forgive me if I don't shake your hand."

"That's alright," Reid said, walking until he was on the other side of the corpse. "So what have you found?"

The doctor sighed and blew some stray strands of hair out of her eyes. "Not much. All of the victims were found hours after the time of death, so there would be time for any drugs this guy might've used to be flushed out of the system, an' I'm inclined to believe there's drugs because I literally cannot find any sign of an incapacitating blow. The lacerations on the neck-" She tilted the body's chin up and Reid crouched down so he could look closer at the wounds. "- it's like they're... just for fun. Some kind of overkill. Both the carotid artery and the jugular vein were cut, from separate strokes. The killer tore through the trachea, and I found some razor blades that had sliced into his oesophagus and were embedded in his stomach." She turned to the side and produced a labelled glass jar smeared with blood and containing four razor blades.

"Two more razors were found still in his neck, but I have to say it's impossible to tell which cuts were first. One of my theories," she said with a sigh, turning around to place the jar back down. "Was that, if there were drugs used, the injection site could very well be on the neck, and the lacerations are covering that up. Either that or the killer's just very quick and slit their throats without them kicking up a fuss."

Reid hummed in agreement, peering closely at the open neck in front of him while Knightly shifted uncomfortably a few feet behind him. The body belonged to the third victim, Michael Conner, who was fit and tan and completely unharmed aside from the massacre on his neck. There were small old scars, a faint line on his arm that looked like stitches from years ago. But there was nothing new. No scratches, no bruises, not even from falling over after his neck had been cut open. The blood pool on his couch had suggested he hadn't moved from his position watching TV, and it appeared that was true.

Had he fallen asleep before the unsub seized his chance? The first victim had been found in his bed, his wife waking to the sight of her dead husband, but the second had been in the kitchen, laying in front of the fridge like he had decided that would be a perfect place for a nap. The fourth victim had been sitting in front of his computer, blood sprayed on the screen and his face pressed against the keys, a long line of 'h's trailing through his word document.

None of them sported any kind of head wound, even the second victim who, by all standards, should have at least fallen onto the ground when he was killed.

Thoughts of finding Carver Edlund, aka Chuck Shurley, were not gone from his head, but there was a more urgent mystery in front of him, a new conundrum that he had to focus all his attention on or else there would be more bodies. He only hoped that with more clues, all the lack of evidence he was seeing would get less confusing.


	4. Chapter 4

Notes: I'm now taking a class over the summer, so I expect that'll affect my updating. But I'll still try and get these chapters pumped out as fast as I can. This is just a heads up in case I get bogged down.

* * *

CHAPTER FOUR

The first crime scene was a sorry sight to see. The Calmers' bedroom was a bloody mess, even though it had been weeks since he had been killed. Jenny, Andrew Calmer's wife, had been staying with her sister, too traumatized by waking up to her husband's corpse to enter the house she once called home. She had agreed to a short interrogation outside the house, but she would go no further than the sidewalk.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, her blue eyes dull and overshadowed by the lines and shadows under her eyes that had been born from stress.

"It's alright," Prentiss said, her voice soothing. "It's perfectly understandable after what happened. But we do need to understand what happened, so could you just walk us through it?"

Jenny nodded and bit her lip. "We... we had gone to bed early. Andrew was feeling more tired from work than usual, so he went up first. I finished washing the dishes and he was already asleep when I got up there. I'm a light sleeper," she added, her voice full of anguish. "I should have heard someone coming in, I should have woken up, but I didn't. I woke up at six, just like I always do, and I turned over, an-and," she paused and took in a choking breath, tears springing to her eyes. "There he was. On his back, eyes closed, and his neck-" She gestured helplessly towards her own throat, her breath coming out in shudders now.

"It's alright," Prentiss repeated, a comforting hand on Jenny's shoulder, prompting her to continue. "What did you do next?"

"I screamed," Jenny said, a sad laugh in her words. "I screamed and jolted out of bed. I didn't want to touch him, I-I just wanted to get away. I ran down the hallway... I think I broke a lamp," she added with another heartbroken laugh. "I called 911, and Mrs. Wilfred from next door came knocking. She heard me screaming, wanted to know if everything was alright..." There was a tense moment of silence, and Prentiss watched as Jenny bit her lip again and wipe away some of the tears that had leaked out.

"Mrs. Calmer," she began, taking a quick glance back at the house where Hotch and Rossi had already gone in. "Was there anyone who might've had something against your husband? Did he receive any threats, was he involved in any altercations shortly before his death?"

Jenny shook her head. "No, no, he was well-liked wherever he went. Not the kind of guy everyone flocked to, but he was pleasant to everyone. Everyone at the diner had only nice things to say about him."

"Alright, I just have one more question," Prentiss motioned to a nearby police officer, who handed her Andrew Calmer's file. She pulled out the picture of the hex bag and showed it to the other woman. "I know police already asked you if you recognized this, but I'd like to make sure Andrew did not own anything like this."

"No, no," Jenny said, taking the picture and peering closely at it. "I've never seen it before you guys showed me these pictures. What is it?"

"It's apparently a hex bag," Prentiss said, taking the photo back. "Police opened it up and found a number of herbs, animal bones, as well as some strands of Andrew's hair."

"A hex bag?" Jenny said disbelievingly.

"It's likely that the unsub is using this as some sort of signature, or is a believer in this kind of magic. Do you... know anyone that believes this?"

"Well, there's some of the kids around here," Jenny said, rubbing her collarbone uncomfortably. "I don't personally know any Wiccans or anything, but..." She paused, thinking, but continued at Prentiss' prompting look. "There's a guy, lives around here, he's the author of this series of books, ummm, _Supernatural_. Some people have gotten into it. I remember a couple of years ago there were some kids playing pranks based around some of the monsters, calling themselves _indigos_ or something like that. But Andrew and I have never met the guy, so..."

"That's fine. Thank you for your time," Prentiss said, and Jenny gave her a quick, tight smile. She turned back to the car she had driven in, giving the house one last, lingering look before driving away.

Prentiss entered the house, the soft sounds of Hotch and Rossi drifting down the silent building, guiding her up the stairs and into the bedroom. The crime scene was messy, and there were signs of police work shifting things around as they gathered evidence. The broken lamp Jenny had mentioned was cleaned up, but it was obvious not much else had been done. The bloodstain on the bed was old and brown, the sheets crinkled beneath it.

"What have you got?" she asked the men as she looked around the room.

"Not much," Rossi said, a huffy sigh escaping his lips. "He seems like a very average guy. Twenty-five, married to his childhood sweetheart. Looks like they were thinking about having a baby," he added, taking some pregnancy pamphlets out of the bedside drawer."

"What did the widow have to say?" Hotch asked, turning from the closet to look at Prentiss.

"Well, she seems genuinely traumatized. Says that even though she's a light sleeper, she didn't hear anybody come in." Rossi made a noise of mild disbelief.

"She could be telling the truth," Hotch said. "It would mean that the unsub is very prepared and sneaky. He would have to know the layout of the house, as well as the habits of both Mr. and Mrs. Calmer. The unsub must have had a key, because there was no sign of forced entry on any doors or windows."

"Are we sure Mrs. Calmer couldn't have done this?" Rossi asked.

"Well, what reason would she have to kill the other victims?" Prentiss asked. "We shouldn't eliminate the possibility, but I don't think she did it."

Hotch's cell phone rang out and he took a moment to talk to the person on the other end. Prentiss took the time to look around, looking at the pictures on the shelves, most of them involving the two Calmers. There were a few with other people, arms slung casually over shoulders, and a good number of them taking place in a place called Kripke's Hollow Diner, where Andrew worked.

Hotch hung up and turned to the two with a gaze even more serious than usual. "Officers at the second scene were searching and they found another hex bag."

"Really?" Rossi said, an eyebrow climbing into his brow line. "Looks like we may have a signature."

"That reminds me," Prentiss said, looking thoughtful. "Jenny said that there was an author around here that writes the _Supernatural_ books, and the town's had some trouble with kids imitating the crimes in the books."

"_Supernatural_?" Rossi asked. "Aren't those the books that Garcia and Reid have been reading?"

"The one and the same," Prentiss nodded. "Jenny said she doesn't know anyone personally who follows the series, or uses witchcraft, and she's never met the author, but there might be link there."

"Alright," Hotch said with one final glance around the room. "Let's check the other crime scenes first, find the other hex bags, then meet everyone back at the station and find out what everyone else has got."

Prentiss and Rossi both gave a short nod and they filed out of the room, reconvening with the police officers and driving towards their next houses.

* * *

Garcia fidgeted in her seat as Morgan gripped the steering wheel beside her, turning away from the publishing house as they made their way out of Holt. The page of black-listed authors was in her hands, but it didn't give her any information other than their names and the reason they were banned.

_Joey Grace – talented artist, but refuses to work with others, terrible story-telling skills in both novel and graphic novel format_

_Katherine Nate – a complete lack of knowledge about the simplest grammatical terms_

_Joyce Pestle – after tenth rejected story, threw chair at me_

"Something interesting on there?" Morgan's voice interrupted her thoughts and she jumped a little, the seat belt jerking against her hips. Morgan chuckled and flipped his turn signal.

"Um, yeah, there are some pretty crazy wannabe authors in this area," she chuckled, waving the piece of paper around a little. "This lady, Joyce Pestle, apparently threw a _chair_ at Vincent when he rejected yet another of her stories. "

"What?"

"Yeah, and she wasn't the only one to sip the crazy juice. It says here that a Harvey Radin started beating Vincent's desk with the chair he was sitting in, and two more ladies, Ellie Criss and Vanessa Barsky threw various items from his desk at him, including a picture frame."

Morgan whistled. "Damn, it'll be a bitch narrowing it down from there."

"Well, sugar, that's what we're meeting at the station for," Garcia said, patting his knee. "So that we may all put our delicious brains together to figure out this icky mess."

"Delicious? What, you some kind of zombie now?" Morgan snorted, flashing Garcia a playful grin.

"Oh, you don't need to worry, honey," she cooed. "I save the best for last."

They laughed together and Morgan returned his full attention to the highway before him, not noticing as Garcia sneacked a glance at a scrap of paper tucked into her bra. She adjusted the seat belt, using the motion to tuck the paper further into her bosom, covering the list of numbers and letters that followed Chuck Shurley's name.

* * *

Reid and Knightly rejoined JJ at the station after going over the other bodies with Dr. Hayes and still finding nothing. It was too late to look at the bodies for traces of whatever drug had been used, and a thorough drug test had been done on Vincent Carter's body when he came in, but there was nothing to be found.

JJ had been busy at work, and the board behind her was full of pictures of the victims, the crime scenes, the hex bag, a map of the town. Files were spread out on the table in front of her and she seemed to be picking and choosing various pages and pictures to put up on the board under their corresponding victim.

She looked up as they approached and gave them a small smile. "Hey, what did you find?"

"A fat load of nothing," Knightly muttered as he walked up to the board to look at it.

"There are no visible injection sites," Reid said, pulling his bag over his head and placing it down next to the desk. "And based on how quickly the tests were run, there's either no drugs used, which doesn't make much sense, or the injection site was at the neck itself."

"How would the unsub be able to get that close?" JJ asked, wrinkling her nose. "I get that the unsub must have been someone non-threatening, but I think someone would have fought back if they saw a needle coming for their neck."

"Well, Calmer and Conner could have already been asleep at the time of injection, and Carter was working from his computer, so it might have been easy to sneak up on him."

"William Gull was in the kitchen," JJ said, glancing over to the pictures of the second victim. "He could have been snuck up on, especially if he trusted the unsub, but it takes time for any kind of drug to work. There was a knife on the counter, he should have been able to fight back."

The doors to the station opened as Hotch, Rossi and Prentiss entered with some police officers, holding a stack of photos and some evidence bags.

"We found more hex bags," Hotch said and posted the pictures up on the board. "Gull's was found taped to the underside of the kitchen sink, Conner's was inside his couch cushions, and Carter's was found inside a secret compartment of his laptop case."

"That sounds like someone's trying for them not to be found," JJ mused.

"We thought they might have been hidden before the murders took place," Rossi said, holding up a bag to look at it. "It's most likely that the victims are being stalked, targeted specifically, and the unsub learns their patterns, gets close to them before the strike."

"And we have a list of suspects from Vincent Carter's computer," Morgan said from the doorway, holding it open as Garcia walked in. "It looks like they have a problem with authors, and Carter's got a black-list full of people with anger issues."

Garcia handed the paper over and let the agents look over it, watching as the eyebrows raised. Reid glanced at her quickly before looking at the paper, reading the names. None of them he had seen in correlation to the other victims, but the paperwork the police were able to scrounge up about them involved mostly their professional lives. Andrew Calmer was a waiter at Kripke's Hollow Diner, and William Gull was a cook at the same place. Michael Conner was a bartender, and Vincent Carter an editor. None of them ever had a criminal record, or every pressed charges against someone, or were involved in any kind of drama, save for Carter, who had successfully sued Joyce Pestle for her chair attack.

The agents talked about the links between the victims while Garcia was escorted to a cheap computer. She used it to look up the black-listed authors and get all the information she could. She printed off images of their drivers licenses, or work IDs, anything she could. Nine of them lived in Kripke's Hollow, and twelve more in Holt. She brought the information to the team, who looked over it as the sun set.

"We'll need to talk with these people," Hotch said. "Find any connection to the victims. These attacks were personal," he addressed the police officers who had gathered. "This unsub is an organized killer targeting people he thinks have wronged him. The first three victims have similar features, a type, which suggests an attraction. It's highly possible the unsub is either a homosexual male, or a woman. The lack of sexual violence supports the woman theory, but don't rule anything out."

"The unsub will be small physically, whether male or female, someone the victims felt comfortable with letting their guard down around. They don't appear to be a threat, but that's the wrong assumption," Morgan said. "It's possible the unsub had a sexual or romantic encounter with the first three victims, or tried to. They will have been rejected, or insulted, something to trigger this unsub's need for vengeance."

"Tomorrow we'll check at the diner, but the bar Michael Conner worked at is worth checking out tonight," Hotch said, nodding to the officers in front of him. He turned back to the team, looking at Reid and Garcia standing next to each other. "I'm sure you've already found out the author of _Supernatural_ lives here," he said, looking pointedly at Garcia, who gave him a nervous smile and a shrug of her shoulders. "I want you to see him tomorrow morning, see if he knows any of the authors personally. He's a hit author and this town has had people imitating his stories in the past. He might have some link to the hex bags and the Wicca community, whether he reached out to them, or they reached out to him. But," he added harshly, eyes narrowing at the grin slowly making it's way across Garcia's face. "I'm expecting you to represent the BAU. Be professional. I know you'd sneak away to see him anyways," Reid made sure to suppress his flinch at the accurate words. "Just make sure you get whatever information you can when you're there."

"Roger Dodger, bossman!" Garcia chirped happily, resisting the urge to pat the piece of paper in her bra. She didn't even need to sneak a peek at his address in Carter's laptop.

"We will," Reid said, much more subdued than Garcia, but he was humming underneath his skin. He was so close to the answers he needed.

He didn't go with the others to the bar to question Conner's fellow employees and loyal customers, choosing to try and get some sleep. But he lay on the mattress, closed his eyes and found his mind going from thought to thought at an alarming rate. He was going in circles, pulling out memories from his rescue, his dreams, the books, and his research into the real identities of two of his saviours.

Eventually his mind burned itself out and he slipped into a dream, the smell of old leather and gunpowder sharp in his nose, but the sound of a purring engine cradled him as he looked into harsh blue eyes.

"Soon," he murmured, feeling tired from the memory. "I'll find out what's going on soon."

The man in front of him simply nodded, never blinking, as Reid drifted back into a restless darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Reid woke up at the crack of dawn and couldn't fall back asleep. His excited mind trembled and jittered and wouldn't let him lay still for more than a few seconds. After a while, he gave up and left to get some coffee – the good kind, not the sludge their hotel had in the lobby. He walked down the street to a diner – not Kripke's Hollow Diner, but rather one that was not linked to the case – and enjoyed his sugared coffee with the gentle hum of a quiet morning. He checked the clock almost obsessively, waiting until eight o'clock rolled around so he and Garcia could meet Chuck Shurley.

_So close_, he realized. He was so close. He gripped his third cup of coffee tightly in his hand, the warmth seeping through the ceramic almost scalding. For over a year he had been plagued with doubts and questions, and now he had the chance to get the answers he had been looking for. He didn't want to wait for Garcia, and he didn't want to have to ask about these murders before getting his personal questions answered, but he knew he had to.

His cell phone rang at seven thirty, and he answered it, finishing off his coffee and paying while Garcia talked animatedly on the line.

"We have to ask about the case first," he reminded her as he walked back to the hotel. "We'll have time afterwards, but finding the unsub is the first priority."

"Right, right," Garcia agreed, though her voice betrayed her disappointment. "But we can go now, yeah?"

Reid glanced at his watch, reading seven forty-three. "Yeah, I'm just on my way back to the hotel now. Then we can go."

Garcia squealed in his ear and said a quick goodbye, the phone going silent in his hand. Within minutes he was standing in the lobby of their hotel, greeting JJ as she left for the station, the other members of the team having left while he was having his coffee. Garcia bustled down the hall and swooped upon him, practically dragging him to the SUV. She insisted on driving, and while normally Reid would protest her distrust of his driving skills, he needed the time to compose himself.

He ran his fingers through his hair, stringy to the touch. He grimaced, realizing he hadn't showered that morning, even though he had been given plenty of time. His eyes felt sunken and irritated and all the caffeine he had ingested couldn't help that. He was jittery and armed, which was never a good combination, even though he wasn't the trigger happy type.

He took in a few deep breaths as Garcia took the address she had previous hidden in her bra out and followed the streets to their destination. Hotch hadn't told them where Chuck had lived, so he must have known Garcia found out or would find out the location. He knew her well.

It took them no more than fifteen minutes to drive up to the small house that Garcia had gotten from Carter's computer. They parked and exited the car, and Reid wiped sweaty palms across his trousers, giving Garcia a quick glance. "Remember," he said, clearing his throat to try and mask his nervousness. "Case first."

"I know, I know," she sighed, rolling her eyes and walking with him up the pathway to the door. She knocked harshly on the door, and Reid sucked in a breath, bouncing on the balls of his feet as they waited for the door to open.

The door creaked, and a small woman with long brown hair looked at them from the threshold. "Can I help you?" she asked, tilting her head to the side.

"Is Chuck Shurley here?" Reid asked, pulling out his FBI credentials and showing them to the woman, feeling a small boost of confidence as her eyes flashed in recognition. "We'd like to ask him some questions."

"Just a moment," she said, and she disappeared from view, closing the door halfway as she turned. "Chuck, honey," she called out, the excitement making her voice breathy. "The FBI is here to talk to you!"

"What?" A male voice was heard.

"The FBI!"

"I heard you," the man, Chuck, said, and he appeared in the doorway. He looked scruffy and hunched, trying to make himself seem smaller. "Um, hi," he said to the agents. "You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes," Garcia said, interjecting before Reid could even open his mouth. "I'm Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia, and this is Doctor Spencer Reid. May we come in?"

"Uh," Chuck looked back, but shrugged and opened the door wider, ushering them inside the living room. He settled himself on the couch, sweeping pages of writing out of the way. Garcia seated herself on the other end of the couch while Reid stood beside her. The woman that answered the door peeked at them from the doorway to the kitchen, but soon stepped back to get drinks and snacks.

"So what did you want to talk about?" Chuck asked, rubbing his hands nervously.

"Were you aware of the recent deaths of Andrew Calmer, William Gull, Michael Conner, and Vincent Carter?"

"Yeah, uh, I saw it on the news. The... throat... thing..." he said quietly, waving his hand around his throat for emphasis. "I knew Carter from the publishers, a little."

"Big fan, by the way," Garcia said quickly, flashing a brilliant smile while Reid shot her a frown that really looked more like a pout. She wrinkled her nose apologetically at him. Chuck just looked a little surprised and smiled at them.

"Um, thanks..."

"Anyway," Reid said, needing to get the discussion back on track. "Were you aware that Carter had a list of banned authors?"

"Um-hmm." Chuck nodded.

"Did you know any of them personally? Have any of them initiated contact with you, talked about your books?" Reid asked, and Garcia pulled out the names and photos of the authors, handing them to the bearded man. He looked through them, setting a few aside. He put down the larger file and showed them four of the photos.

"I've talked with a few authors, um, some of them have been black-listed. But these ones I would talk to a little more. I only ever talked to Alex and Ellie at the publishers, y'know, when we'd see each other, but I went out for drinks with Bart a few times and Joyce came to my house a few times to talk about _Supernatural_."

Reid took back the photos, reading the names. Alexander Doll, Ellie Criss, Bart McDonald, and Joyce Pestle. He glanced up when the brown haired woman re-entered the room carrying a tray of cookies and lemonade that Reid didn't remember asking for, but he accepted when it was offered. He hadn't had breakfast anyway.

"Do you know if any of them knew how to make a hex bag?" Garcia asked, sipping on her lemonade. Reid wondered if they should be revealing that much of the case, but Hotch hadn't said they couldn't, and didn't say that Chuck was a suspect, so he supposed it wouldn't be all bad. He would just tell the author to not tell anyone, just in case.

"A hex bag?" Chuck asked, looking surprised and confused. Then he shook his head. "That wouldn't narrow it down. I know for certain Joyce and Alex have used them in their stories, and Ellie and Bart have mentioned them and witches in our conversations. Plus, y'know, that sort of information's just out there on the internet nowadays."

"The hex bags involved in our case, which I'll have to ask you both to not talk about with anyone, follow the same formula as the hex bags in your series. We believe the unsub is using these as a signature, placing them in the victims' homes where they die shortly after-"

"Wait," the brunette girl said, her voice ripe with excitement. "A _witch_ is killing people in Kripke's Hollow?"

"Becky," Chuck sighed, looking at her with tired eyes. "Don't be so excited about this."

"Right, sorry," Becky said, though the thin-lipped smile on her face wasn't very convincing. "but come on, you know nothing exciting happens here!"

Garcia and Reid exchanged a glance and Reid exhaled a breath and nodded. He couldn't wait any longer, and now seemed like as good a time as any to segue into a conversation about the truth of the books.

"Mr. Shurley," Reid began, pausing as he tried to come up with the right way to phrase his question.

"Chuck, please," the author said, scratching his beard and watching the two warily.

"Chuck," Garcia chirped up. "How did you come up with the _Supernatural_ story?"

"Does this... have to do with the case?"

"No, no," Garcia said in a calm voice. "We've gotten all the information we need, but like I said, I'm a big fan. I got Reid here into it, too, and we'd just love to use this chance to find out more about our favourite series!"

"Oh, okay," Chuck said, nodding slightly as he reached out for a cookie. "Well, um, it came to me in a dream, I guess. I just kept building from there and pretty soon I had a whole universe written down."

Chuck had already struck Reid as a fidgety, nervous kind of man, but Reid could still see signs that he was lying. Or not telling the whole truth, as the case may be. But he needed to know. His hand gripped Garcia's shoulder, not tight enough to hurt, but enough to provide some support.

"Does the surname Winchester mean anything to you?" Reid asked, narrowing his eyes and watching Chuck and Becky's reactions. Chuck was better at hiding his shock, but Reid still noticed the widening eyes and the twitch of his hands. Becky's mouth dropped open and she glanced anxiously at Chuck.

"Um, wha-what about it?" Chuck said, his fingers tightening around a cookie, his eyes flicking between a spot on the wall near Reid's head and his eyes. There was obviously something they wanted to hide there.

"There happens to be a pair of brothers on the FBI's most wanted list, Sam and Dean Winchester, whose criminal records seem to match the feats the Sam and Dean in your story do. Grave desecration, credit card fraud, first degree murder, armed robbery, kidnapping." He watched Chuck's nervousness increase with every word, but Becky just seemed lost in thought, her brow furrowed as though she was trying to remember something. Suddenly, she gasped. Loudly.

"Spencer Reid!" she shouted, pointing and letting out an excited yell. Reid took a cautious step back, eyeing her warily. "Now I remember you!"

"You met?" Chuck asked.

"We've met?" Reid said simultaneously. Becky shook her head and turned to Chuck.

"No, no! Remember? Spencer, Raphael? 'Choose and do God's will'?"

Garcia took in a sharp breath as Reid froze, his eyes narrowing as the familiar words rang in his head. Chuck looked nervously between all of them, but Becky's words did not seem to ring any bells. Becky rolled her eyes and rushed over to the computer area, opening a filing cabinet and rifling through it until she pulled out a folder.

"It was one of the scenes you didn't want to include, remember? You said it detracted from the overall storyline?"

She was waving the folder around carelessly, and Reid could see papers poking out from the side, snatches of words like _smoke, light, archangel_. He held a trembling hand out as he stared wide-eyed at the woman. "Let me see those," he said, trying to sound polite, but his voice came out gravelly and urgent. Becky blinked at him, but handed the folder over without fuss.

"Umm, I'm not so sure that's a good idea," Chuck said, wincing. Garcia turned on him.

"No, this is the best idea. He has been haunted by these questions ever since that day, and if you know anything you need to tell us right away because this is important! Is all of this real? Do these creatures exist? Did the Apocalypse really almost just happen?"

Chuck was struck dumb, and he stammered and scratched his head. Reid scanned the pages before him, seeing the exact events that happened nearly two years ago from a different perspective. He read about how Castiel sensed Raphael's descent into a new vessel, how the archangel was trapped between the two personalities inside Tobias Hankel's head. He read about their trip down to the cabin, their anger at Raphael's blatant lies, and how they saved Reid, keeping their recognizable faces away from the camera. He read about the three dropping him off at the hospital, only for the brothers to drive away and the angel to fly out from behind him, none of them looking back. None of them sparing more than a second thought for him.

It was true. It was all true. Sam and Dean Winchester were hunters of the supernatural, and Reid had been held hostage by a trapped archangel. He could hear Becky talking to Garcia, telling her all about how she found out everything she had read in her favourite series was true, about how she met the brothers. Chuck was silent, and when Reid looked into his face, he saw a moment of serenity, like the man was perfectly fine with him seeing this, like all his nervousness before had been an act. Or perhaps this calmness was an act.

"Can you call them?" Reid asked, watching the calm man as he slipped into his previous nervous demeanour.

"Um, yeah I can, but they're probably busy, y'know?"

"Please," Reid said, and was a little surprised by the almost desperate, pleading tone his voice took. "I'd like to talk to them."

Chuck paused, then nodded. "I'll see what I can do." He left the room to go talk on the phone and Reid sank into the seat next to Garcia, Becky taking back the folder and returning it to the filing cabinet. Garcia rubbed his back encouragingly, looking a little overwhelmed herself, and Reid flashed her a grateful smile. Then he paused.

"Do you think these murders are the work of an actual witch, then?" he whispered, not wanting Becky to overhear. He wasn't sure he was too trusting of her opinion on the matter, though she had been the first one to broach the idea.

"It's certainly possible, isn't it? I mean, with all the weird things going on with the bodies and the lack of evidence, that would explain some things..."

"Should we tell the team?"

"I don't know if they'd believe us."

That was the issue. Reid wanted to tell his teammates all about how he figured out who saved him, about what really happened, because they deserved to know the truth and Reid did not want to lie to them. But would they just laugh at him? At both of them? He could already see Morgan teasing him about their obsession with _Supernatural_, and accusing them of taking it way too seriously.

"Let's wait a little," he suggested. "It would make the revelation much easier if we had some kind of proof, and we really should focus on finding this witch anyway. We don't need a knowledge of the supernatural to do that. We just have to narrow down the suspects and apprehend the unsub before they can make any more hex bags. Once the witch is in jail, he or she shouldn't be much of a problem unless they have someone on the outside to help them."

"Okay," Garcia said quietly, then looked over at Becky, who had perched herself on the edge of the desk, not interrupting their conversation, but obviously eavesdropping. She smiled at them and after a moment of tense silence, spoke up.

"So which brother's your favourite?"

Reid tuned the conversation between the women debating Sam verses Dean and tried listening to Chuck's voice drifting in from the kitchen.

"You took him to a hospital... No, no, remember? He was FBI? Yeah... Well, he seems nice enough, kinda confused about this whole thing..." There was a long pause and he heard a loud, shaky sigh. "Look, if that's not enough to get you down here, it looks like there's a witch killing some guys around here... Yeah... Yeah... You guys _killed_ my guardian angel, remember?... Hey, maybe Cas could just pop by for a visit? He just has some questions, and I don't think I should be the one answering them... What? I am not – You're the ones that saved him, you should be the ones talking to him... Okay..."

There was more silence and Reid stopped listening, the sounds of Becky and Garcia's argument of Wincest verses Destiel filling his ears. He wondered if the boys were aware of such things, and how awkward it would be if they were there. Since they were real.

Chuck came out of the kitchen, a beer clasped in his hand. "Hey," he greeted them, shifting his feet. "So, uh, they said they're not too far away, so they'll probably swing by so they can check out this witch thing, and you can, y'know, talk to them then. Just, uh, don't arrest them, yeah?" he added with a nervous laugh. Reid gave him a small smile.

"Sam and Dean Winchester are officially listed as deceased, anyway. And if all the things they've done are real, then I'm wanting them out there, hunting, keeping the world safe," Reid said, trying to keep his voice light. He wanted to talk to them right away, but he should have realized it wouldn't be so easy. There were so many things out in the world, people that the BAU chased down and apprehended, and things that the brothers and other hunters tracked and killed. It was no surprise that the brothers couldn't be there right away.

They parted ways, Reid giving Chuck his card with the promise that he would call him as soon as he knew the boys were in town. Garcia swapped numbers with Becky and promised she would chat with her soon to continue their fangirling. The two agents climbed into the SUV, no more than a hour passed since they had left it, and Reid planned what he would tell the team, the pictures of Pestle, Criss, McDonald, and Doll in his hands.

He had the truth, that there were things out there he read about in his stories, in the dark of night. That there were angels and demons and witches and hunters alongside the criminals and serial killers he worked against. And at the moment, those worlds were blended. He had a witch to catch.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

Reid and Garcia met with the team at the station and gave a report on what Chuck had told them about the authors, pinning the pictures of the four suspects up on the board. They were told what had happened at the bar last night, finding out that all but one of the black-listed authors that lived in Kripke's Hollow visited the bar, and four of them were regulars: Katherine Nate, Joyce Pestle, Vanessa Barsky, and Joey Grace.

"The bartender on duty shared a few shifts with Michael Conner," Hotch said. "He said Conner was a favourite among the ladies and that he took a few home with him. Including Joyce Pestle and Vanessa Barsky."

"Pestle is showing up on a lot of these lists," Prentiss noted, one eyebrow raised as she looked at the picture of the woman with short black hair.

"Definitely someone worth looking into," Morgan agreed. Reid nodded and tried to see if he could tell if the woman was a witch or not from her picture. She looked perfectly normal, dyed black hair cut into a pixie hairstyle and dark brown eyes looking dully at the camera. But then again, the witches from _Malleus Maleficarum_ looked like average people.

"I'll have her brought in for questioning," Knightly said with a nod. He wrote down the woman's address and gathered a few of his men, Morgan joining him after a moment's deliberation. The rest of the team waited in the station, reading all the information they had about Pestle.

"She's twenty-five," JJ said, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. "Born July seventh. She's lived here all her life, graduated from high school, but didn't go to college."

"And she has a record," Rossi piped up, giving the piece of paper in his hand a light shake. "Throwing a chair at Vincent Carter wasn't her first act of aggression."

"What has she done before?" Hotch asked, his arms folded over his chest.

"She's been charged with aggravated assault two times since she's graduated, and has multiple charges for battery. Most of those were when she was a juvenile, but it looks like she still has a hard time dealing with her anger issues."

"I'll say," Prentiss scoffed, her eyes flickering over the board.

It was a half hour later that Morgan called them to say that they had Pestle in custody and that the police were on their way back to the station. He was going to stay behind and look through her things.

"That's a good idea," Hotch said. "Reid, Prentiss, go join Morgan and see what you can find out about her." The two agents nodded and gathered their things, shuffling into their SUV and making their way to Pestle's house. They saw the cop car with the woman inside as they went opposite directions.

"She looked angry," Prentiss remarked with a soft laugh. "But given her track record, I would have been surprised if she was calm about being brought in, whether she's innocent or not."

"I wonder if she resisted," Reid said, twisting around in his seat to look out the back window, though the car with Pestle in it was long gone.

"Probably," Prentiss replied, turning onto the next street. "She seems the type. I gotta say, though, walking into this thing, I wasn't expecting such violence out of a woman. Especially a small one like her."

"There's a preconception when discussing a crime to assume that it was committed by a male, but it _is_ supported by statistics. In fact, just last year there were a total of eight million, twenty-six thousand, seven hundred and ninety-six crimes committed by men in the United States, whereas females only committed two million, seven hundred fourteen thousand, three hundred and sixty-one crimes. In the age group of twenty-five to twenty-nine, both sexes had the highest number of crimes, with males reaching one million, one hundred seventy-five thousand, four hundred and twenty-six and females with three hundred eighty-one thousand, three hundred and eighty-one."

Prentiss bit her lip while smiling, not listening too closely, but amused by how much Reid knew. It was better than a silent car ride anyway.

"They looked at individual crimes, like burglary, motor vehicle theft, murder and non-negligent manslaughter, and in almost every single one the males had a higher number than the females. The only ones the females had more arrests in were prostitution, with males having only seventeen thousand, two hundred and three, while females had thirty-nine thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven, and well as with runaways, where males had thirty-three thousand and eighty-four, while females had forty thousand, seven hundred and ten."

"Wow," Prentiss said, her voice impressed and amused. "That's something."

"It's really quite fascinating," Reid said, a smile on his face. "In fact, there's – oh!" He stopped, peering down the street Prentiss had slowed onto. "Is that it?"

"Yep," she said, turning onto the driveway and putting the SUV into park. They climbed out and made their way to the unlocked door. Morgan greeted them from the living room where he was looking through the books she owned.

"She give you any trouble?" Prentiss teased, noticing the scratches on Morgan's chin and bicep. The other man rolled his eyes.

"She's scrappy. As soon as she saw police on her doorstep she started yelling at us, which only got worse when we announced she had to come with us. She took a swing at Knightly's face, which he dodged, but he wasn't so lucky when she kicked his groin."

"Ooo," Prentiss moaned, wincing in sympathy while Reid wrinkled his nose.

"Some of other officers got a few scratches and bruises when we moved to subdue her, but we got her into the car without much damage. I can only hope it stays that way," he muttered, gently rubbing the skin around the scratch on his chin. It had drawn only a pinprick of blood, but it was red and irritated.

"Well, what have you gotten from her house so far? Any connection to the first victims?"

"Not yet," Morgan said, pulling a book out of the bookshelf and flipping through it. "Apparently she has a thing for vampires, because most of her stuff is either a novel about them, or something kind of vampire dictionary. She's got other books, including that _Supernatural_ series." He placed the book back and tapped on the line of _Supernatural_ books spanning across an entire shelf. "They're well-worn from reading, and she's got an address tucked into one of them."

"An address?" Reid asked, walking over. Morgan pulled out one of the books – _Dead Man's Blood_, Reid wasn't surprised to see that – and opened it up, taking the scrap of paper out and handing it over. Reid nodded. "That's Chuck Shurley's address."

"She's the one that kept coming over to chat, yeah?" Prentiss asked while Morgan put the book back. Reid nodded. The three of them poked around the room a little until Reid found Pestle's writing space and announced he was going to look through her stories. There were printed copies filed away in the desk, typed and printed with red marks nearly covering the pages in Carter's handwriting. He sat down and scanned through the stories, reading both Pestle's short novels and the corrections Vincent Carter tried making to them.

Reid knew he wasn't the expert on pop culture and modern trends in novels, but he could certainly see why Carter kept rejecting her work. He was very nearly reading the same story over and over again, watching cliche after cliche pass by. The stories were arranged in the order she wrote them, including stories she hadn't submitted to Flying Wiccan Press, so Reid could clearly see the moments when Carter just stopped caring about her work, when the polite and distant words written in red became scathing.

Prentiss stopped by after looking through Pestle's bedroom and asked him what he had gathered from the stories.

"She's definitely got a thing for vampires," Reid said, flipping through the pages of the last story he read. "But she has written stories focusing on other supernatural creatures, including a couple about witches that seem to include the same formula that Chuck's series, including some hex bags that they use to induce heart attacks, cause lightning strikes, and severe illnesses. And these are the protagonists using these."

"Her hero's the bad guy?" Prentiss said, raising an eyebrow.

"There's certainly a sort of gray morality present in all of her stories, but in general the villain is an authority figure that's just doing their job, and our hero is killing people and kidnapping them. They're all really quite violent," he said, handing over one of the stories titled _Blood Bones_. "There's a lot of detail put into the torture scenes. Most of what happens is medically implausible, but it's obvious those are the scenes she puts the most time into."

"She definitely likes her violence," Prentiss remarked, flipping through the first chapter, already finding the detailed gore Reid talked about. "It looks like she's really unsatisfied with her life."

"And she's using these stories to vent her issues and violent tendencies."

"Except it's not working well enough, because she's still flipping out at people, throwing chairs."

"Yes, but I don't think she was the one to kill any of the victims," Reid said, standing up. "It looks like she has trouble controlling her anger when it comes, but when she can't control it, she goes wild. She threw a chair at Vincent Carter when he rejected another of her stories. This room is messy. The stories are organized, but there's things strewn around."

"Her bedroom's pretty messed up too. Her laundry was everywhere, and I found some broken items."

"If she were to try and kill someone, it would likely be in a moment of passion, of rage. The unsub obviously targets specific people and marks them for death, then ensures that the only body part that's damaged is their throat. If Pestle were to kill someone, I would expect to see more damage to the body, possibly even with a whole new cause of death, like head trauma."

"Well, I agree with you there," Prentiss sighed, leaning against the door frame as she tossed the story on the desk. "But we'll wait until Hotch and the others finish interrogating her and give their verdict before setting her free."

"Oh, certainly," Reid said, placing all the stories back in their order and tucking them back into the desk drawer. "Though they'll probably still keep her for assault on a police officer."

"And a Federal Agent," Prentiss added with a grin, glancing back as Morgan entered the room behind her. He raised an eyebrow, obviously hearing her comment but choosing not to reply.

"You all done here?" he asked and the two nodded. They returned to the car Prentiss and Reid had used to get there, Morgan having rode in a police cruiser, and began their ride back. Reid filled Morgan in on his theory, and the two others pitched their opinions on what they saw in the rest of the house. Prentiss made a quick call to the team back at the station and then informed the others in the car that they would be making a quick stop at the diner to get a late lunch. And since they could ask some questions of the people that worked with Andrew Calmer and William Gull, it was viewed as a win-win situation for all involved.

The people at the diner were very helpful, informing the agents that they didn't know who Joyce Pestle was. The take-out boxes that Morgan had found in her kitchen garbage suggested that when she didn't feel like cooking she ordered in, which Reid felt solidified his belief that it wasn't Pestle who was the witch. The first two victims were from the same diner, so it was highly likely the unsub was a regular at Kripke's Hollow Diner.

A few of the names rang some bells, but all the staff members that were on duty weren't close enough to either men to really tell them about their private lives and who they hung out with. So the agents left their number with the waitress they were talking to in case she learned anything new and took their lunch with them back to the station.

They opened the doors and walked up to the space set aside for the team where JJ eagerly accepted her lunch and Garcia began fussing over the scratch on Morgan's chin. Prentiss pulled out her own burger and sat down next to JJ. "So how's it going?" she asked, handing over a bottle of water. JJ rolled her eyes.

"Garcia and I have a bet going on how many times that woman can use the 'f' word."

"I swear she's going to break one hundred before five o'clock," Garcia giggled, patting Morgan's cheek affectionately before getting her lunch.

Reid walked towards the interrogation room, commenting to Hotch outside that they had picked up some lunch. The man nodded and waited a minute before entering the room and informing Rossi and Knightly inside that they could step out. Pestle sat handcuffed to the table, glaring daggers at the stern-faced man as he entered and giving them one last comment before they all left.

"I didn't do it, you motherfuckers!" she yelled, her handcuff clattering against the metal table. "I'm no witch, I'm no killer, and you can all burn in Hell for accusing an innocent woman!"

Rossi shook his head as soon as the door closed. "That's some woman," he remarked, and Knightly gave a scoffing laugh from beside him, rubbing a hand over his face.

"We'll certainly charge her for assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, but tell me: is she as innocent as she says?" Knightly asked, looking at the three agents beside him with tired eyes.

"She's got issues," Rossi said. "But she doesn't strike me as the type to plan a murder like this."

"Agreed," Hotch said, then he turned to look at Reid. "What did you get from her house?"

"She uses her stories to vent her anger, and the constant use of authority figures as antagonists suggests a problem with her standing in the world, wanting to be more successful than she is, but she doesn't seem like our unsub."

The four of them nodded in understanding, though Knightly soon groaned and dropped his chin onto his collarbone. "Great," he grumbled. "That means I got sacked for nothing."

"You look tired," Hotch said, nodding towards the officer. "Have you slept recently?"

"I got a few hours of sleep last night after the bar," the other man said, waving a hand dismissively. "I'll be fine. I just wanna catch this guy. Or girl. Whatever."

"You should get some sleep. Your mind will work better when you're well-rested," Rossi added, clapping a hand onto the man's shoulder.

"I don't need it," Knightly insisted, turning to walk back to the station lobby.

"Actually, a proper night's sleep is highly conductive to a good work performance," Reid said. "In a survey done by the Better Sleep Council, they report that there is an alarming decline in quality of work, around thirty-one percent, poor judgement, thirty-one percent, and trouble retaining information, with thirty percent, and forty-four percent said they were more likely to be in an unpleasant mood, which is troubling for everyone around them. There's an estimated one hundred and fifty billion dollars lost annually in U.S. Businesses due to absenteeism and lost productivity.

"Ummm," Knightly paused, looking a little guilty. "I'll go to sleep after my shift is over..."

Rossi patted him on the shoulder again and the group walked back to the rest of the team, gathering their share of the lunch.

Joyce Pestle was charged with assault and resisting arrest while the rest of the team looked back at their other suspects and Garcia griped that she couldn't win the bet against JJ. Knightly left at five and another officer, Martin Emory, took his place with helping Garcia sift through the records of their other suspects. It wasn't any more than an hour later that Hotch's phone rang.

"Hello?" he asked. There was a pause. "Knightly? Slow down... Hold on." He set the phone on speaker and the officer's voice rang out in the station.

"_I found a hex bag,"_ he said, and instantly everyone was paying very close attention.

"Where?" Morgan asked, leaning in close.

"_In my house! I just went to bed and I felt a lump in my mattress, so I lift it up and there it is!"_

"You certain? It looks just like the other ones?" Hotch asked.

"_Well I haven't opened it up, but-"_ He paused to cough. _"-but it looks like it."_

"You okay?" Prentiss asked, her brows furrowing.

There was another short burst of coughing. _"I'm fine. My throat hurts. Must be coming down with something..."_ he muttered, and then started coughing again. Reid tensed and glanced at Garcia, who stared worriedly at the phone.

There was a clatter and more wheezing breaths, then a soft and breathy, _"Oh God."_


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

The wheezing breaths and wet coughs coming over the speakerphone had grabbed the attention of most of the station and there was a stunned silence before pandemonium erupted. Officers were yelling at each other, assigning who was to drive up to Knightly's house, who was going to contact the hospital. The agents were trying to get Knightly to talk to them, trying to figure out if the unsub had gotten in. Reid was wracking his memory to see what would stop a spell while it was being cast. The unsub was probably not in Knightly's home, but he didn't know where the unsub would be, so they couldn't interrupt the spell on her end.

He glanced at Garcia, wide-eyed, and saw her whispering something under her breath, staring at the phone. It took a moment to realize what words her lips were forming, but he jumped up and nearly yelled into the receiver.

"Burn it! Knightly, you have to burn the hex bag _right now_!"

The surprised noises from the rest of his team drowned out whatever reply Knightly was able to croak out.

"Reid, what are you talking about?"

"That's evidence, man!"

"What are you on?"

"Shut up!" Reid yelled, the shock of it silencing the people around him. "Knightly, burn that hex bag if you want to live!"

There was another wet cough from the phone, but it sounded affirmative, so Reid turned to the others and said, "We should get down there." He barely waited for anyone to follow him before he rushed out of the station and into a SUV. Garcia was quick to follow, and she tossed him the keys as she climbed into the passenger seat. He started the car just as Morgan jumped into the back, buckling up as an afterthought.

"I don't know what you're trying to pull, kid," Morgan said, closing his own seat belt as he looked worriedly at the man in the driver's seat. "But you owe us a full explanation once this is done."

"Deal," Reid said, and he stepped on the gas. He had to resist pressing the pedal to the mat, knowing his cornering skills weren't the greatest at the slower speeds and not wanting to test them out any higher. He turned on the siren and sped through the streets, Garcia rattling off directions as she looked at her GPS.

It wasn't long before they found Knightly's home, three cop cars already parked on the street in front of it. Reid parked half on the sidewalk and turned the car off swiftly, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the door in one motion. The three of them rushed out of the car and through the open doorway. An officer was standing there, scrubbing his face with the palm of his hand.

"How is he?" Garcia asked, her voice small with fear.

"He should be fine," the officer said, nodding slowly. "He got attacked, but it's only a little. The ambulance is minutes away."

The agents nodded in thanks and moved up the stairs. The other officers at the scene directed them towards Knightly's bedroom, where they found two other cops crouched by the man lying still on the floor, a pile of ashes by his head. He was still breathing, but blood was staining the carpet and was smeared all over his face. From where they stood, they could see a small trickle of blood coming from the centre of his throat, where half a razor blade could be seen jutting out from the flesh.

"Knightly?" Reid asked softly, kneeling next to the man's head. The cop next to him shifted, patting Knightly's arm as he stood up and walked away. "How are you?"

There was a moment of silence, where the officer seemed to try and gather his breath as his eyes slid over to glance at the pile of ashes before looking at Reid. "It was blue..." he rasped out. "The flames... were blue..."

"The ambulance will be here soon," Reid said, hearing the siren as he finished talking. "You'll be fine."

"Why... why were the flames blue?"

Paramedics soon arrived, taking the man out on a stretcher with murmured assurances that he would be fine and solving crimes in no time. Most of the officers left with him, either to accompany the man to the hospital, or to return to the station to tell the others their comrade was still alive. Morgan called Hotch and the others to update them on Knightly's condition. They were already en-route to Knightly's house, so they told Morgan they would just turn around and head to the hospital.

Reid took this time to kneel next to the ashes, turning them over with the tip of a pen. He could make out crumbled, scorched bones, but there was nothing else to identify what was in it. But it was an authentic hex bag. Knightly had burned it – Reid could see the lighter tossed under the bed – and that had stopped the spell.

He felt Morgan looking at him, knowing he was expecting some answers. Reid hadn't thought he would have to reveal the supernatural world so soon, but he wasn't about to think up some lacklustre lie on the spot. He stood up and turned to the other man, who had finished his call and now stood by the foot of the bed, his arms crossed over his chest.

"You gonna tell me what that was all about, then?" he asked, and Reid sighed, scratching his throat self-consciously.

"Um, well, it's a little out there, I know, and I can't expect you to believe me at face value, but our unsub is a real witch," Reid answered, and Morgan made a disbelieving cough. "The _Supernatural_ series follows the real-life exploits of the Winchester brothers, who are a pair of monster hunters."

"Wait, Winchester? Those guys Hendrickson was after?" Morgan asked, taken aback.

Reid nodded. "The very same. Apparently they've tricked death again and have been continuing their work, joined by an angel-" Morgan scoffed again and unfolded his arms, placing his hands on his hips and shaking his head. Reid continued, "-an angel named Castiel."

Morgan looked ready to continue denying everything Reid was saying, but he paused, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. Reid watched him as he worked it out, Garcia standing by the doorway and biting her lip. Then he saw the realization dawn across Morgan's face.

"Isn't that the same name as that guy..."

"The one that saved me from Hankel?" Reid asked, his voice soft. Morgan nodded. "It's the same. I also looked up the photos of Sam and Dean Winchester, and they match the faces of the other men with him."

"You were saved by a bunch of criminals?" Morgan asked, and Garcia made an exasperated huffing sound from the doorway.

"Technically, yes," Reid said. "However, I would like to point out that the crimes they were charged with were either because they were wrongly accused or because it was necessary in order to dispatch whatever creature they were hunting at the time. Except for the credit card fraud. That is so that they don't get caught for said crimes and sent to jail."

Morgan laughed, his feet shuffling backwards as he ran a hand over his face. He alternated between pointing at the two of them, looking at the ceiling, and watching his feet step back and forth over the carpet. Finally he stopped and looked at Reid. "You really believe this is true, don't you? This could just be a big coincidence."

"Knightly was attacked by the witch, and the attack stopped when he burned the hex bag. And the fire burned blue, you heard him."

"Knightly was just attacked and barely conscious, you can't just take his word for it."

Reid huffed and he saw Garcia roll her eyes and cross her arms. "Well, we'll just have to wait for him to recover and give his testimony, then," he said stubbornly. Morgan rolled his eyes, but conceded the point.

The three of them looked through Knightly's house, but left the thorough searching for the officers itching to get some justice for the attempted murder of their colleague. Reid knew they would be looking for signs of the unsub in the house, but there would be none. Garcia suggested they go to the hospital and meet up with the rest of the team as they awaited news of Knightly's condition, and Morgan agreed.

Reid let Morgan take the keys to the SUV and sat in the back for the ride to the hospital. He was anxious to see the rest of the team, knowing they would ask him about his abrupt instructions to Knightly. Morgan was disbelieving, and even though he tried to make it seem like he was open to the idea, Reid knew that it would be hard for the man to swallow the truth, especially when it came to Heaven and angels, considering the man's wavering issues with faith. But he didn't know if the rest of the team would believe him, or even hear him out.

The silence in the car was stilted and awkward. Garcia shifted in her seat and opened her mouth every so often, but she couldn't find the right thing to say, and so the silence remained unbroken. They arrived at the hospital and Morgan found a parking spot. The rest of the team was waiting in the lobby, and Reid could feel their stares burning into his flesh.

"How's Knightly?" Garcia asked before anyone could begin interrogating Reid.

There was a small moment of silence, then Hotch answered, "He's in surgery right now. They did an x-ray and found that a razor blade had made its way into his stomach."

"It's nothing too serious," JJ added. "No major arteries were hit, and it doesn't look like he'll need a blood transfusion, so they just have to go in, remove the blades, and make sure everything's all stitched up."

There was a murmur of approval and relief, but Prentiss piped up almost casually, "The strange thing is, the doctors said it looked like the razors had come out from the inside of his neck."

Reid nearly fumbled on his feet, even though he was standing still. Hotch glared at her, Morgan and Garcia gave her a shocked look, and the others glanced around warily. Prentiss just gave Reid a little smile and continued, "There were no lacerations in his mouth or the top of his throat to indicate they were shoved down there. It's really something."

"Reid," JJ said, her voice soft. "Can you tell us why you told Knightly to burn the hex bag?"

Reid squirmed on his feet and fidgeted with the hem of his shirt. It was a lot easier to talk about it when he just had to tell Morgan. Now everyone was staring at him, and Hotch's stern gaze was particularly unsettling. But he had to tell him. He inhaled sharply and looked at the clock that was a few inches to the right of Hotch's head.

"Garcia and I learned that the _Supernatural_ series that we have been reading were, in fact, the chronicles of a pair of real life brothers who hunted mythical beings, including a certain brand of witches who gain their powers from demons and use hex bags to channel spells, including a kind of bag that includes something personal of the targets in order to hurt them. In this case, our unsub was using a spell to conjure razor blades to cut up the victims, and the quickest known way to stop a spell is to burn the hex bag that is being used, though there are potions and counter-spells that can be used, and there's also the option of attacking the witch casting the spell, however, seeing as how we don't know who the unsub is, I decided that the best way to ensure that Officer Knightly lived was instructing him to burn the hex bag, which he did, proven by the ashes at his house and by the fact that he's still alive.

"Now, I know you're probably wondering why I'm taking the story so seriously. But I assure you that I have thought long and hard and after this morning's chat with the author, I have come to the conclusion that the _Supernatural_ series, while most likely embellished for artist purposes, holds the truth in regards to the world of monsters. I've searched out the dates and facts given in the book and matched them up to real events, and there are real documented people within the series, including Agent Hendrickson, whom you all may remember, as well as Sam and Dean Winchester, whom I have positively identified as two of the three men who rescued me from Tobias Hankel's alternate personalities. As I have come to understand it, the personality of Raphael was actually the archangel Raphael that had become trapped in a human vessel and was a driving force in trying to bring about the Apocalypse. It's... rather a long story, and to understand it all you really should read _Supernatural_, but a talk with Chuck Shurley confirmed that it was all true. There was even written documentation of my encounter with Raphael, and the Winchester's involvement."

There was a long silence, only the soft sounds of nurses taking calls and bustling around in the background heard. Rossi gave a coughing laugh that he quickly smothered and then Prentiss cracked a grin.

"I only got, like, half of that," JJ said, an amused smile on her face as she crossed her arms. "But essentially you're saying that witches are real, and that almost two years ago an archangel kidnapped you?"

"Well, technically Tobias kidnapped me, but Raphael did keep me there and pointed a gun at my head, so..." Reid trailed off, feeling very nervous, and Hotch's raised eyebrow wasn't doing much to help. He felt Garcia move to stand beside and pat him on the back, her hand soothing in its comfort. Prentiss seemed like she believed him, and JJ seemed open enough. Rossi was a little harder to read, but he at least didn't seem angry at him for spinning such a yarn and for telling Knightly to burn a piece of important evidence. Hotch hadn't changed his expression much, and Reid was sure he wasn't really buying it. He wasn't sure how to convince the man any further, though, unless he came into direct contact with a supernatural creature. Especially one that was visibly inhuman.

Not that he was certain he wanted to do that. Although an altercation with a witch was inevitable, Reid wasn't sure he wanted to come into contact with something like a vampire or a wendigo. Though he had to wonder how many cases they had looked through that were actually the result of a supernatural creature. Had they ever arrested someone who was innocent, simply because the real perpetrator was something they couldn't even conceive of?

"You're here for Leon Knightly?" A nurse walked up to the group, a clipboard in her hand. They all nodded and murmured various forms of confirmation. "He's out of surgery now. We've got him set up in room 207, but he's still sedated and should remain so for at least a few more hours. We'll probably keep him under for the night, just to be safe."

"Alright," Hotch said, giving the nurse a polite nod. She nodded back at him and walked away, murmuring something to the nurse behind the reception desk and dropping off the clipboard before leaving. Hotch turned back to the rest of the team. "There's not much point in staying here. I'll head back to the station and update the officers on Knightly's condition. Everyone else can go back to the motel, review the case. We'll talk to Knightly tomorrow. Reid," he said, and Reid flinched subtly. "We'll talk more on this later."

"Yes, sir," he said, trying not to feel guilty for telling the truth. He quickly turned away, walking with Garcia back to the SUV. Prentiss climbed in with them and clapped a hand on Reid's shoulder, giving it a supportive squeeze.

"I believe you," she whispered, and Reid smiled softly. "You've never given me a reason to think you'd intentionally tell such an incredible lie. But just so you know, if you were lying, the consequences wouldn't be very pleasant." Her grip on his shoulder tightened, and her eyes gained an amused and devious glint to them that almost made Reid gulp. Instead he gave her his most reassuring smile.

"I'm not lying."

"Good," she said, and she released his shoulder. They drove back to the motel in a more comfortable silence, and Reid settled himself in the room he shared with Morgan. He was looking over the list of possible suspects, trying to decide who was the best bet now that Pestle was eliminated, when his roommate entered. Morgan looked at him for a moment before sighing and sitting down at the edge of the bed.

"I'm not saying I believe you," he began, and Reid curled a little closer in on himself. "But Knightly survived an attack that didn't have any trace of another person, and apparently he did that by burning some voodoo bag. And I knew Hendrickson, and I remember him talking about those Winchesters."

Reid nodded, his eyes on the papers in front of him, but he wasn't looking at the words. "I didn't really expect you guys to believe me right away. I figured you would need some kind of proof, but given as how, aside from the Hankel case, I was only just introduced to the world of the supernatural, I don't really have any visual proof that they exist."

Morgan gave a soft laugh. "Well, apparently we're after a witch. Maybe she'll be kind enough to get us up to date." Reid chuckled along with him, simply pleased that Morgan was being so accommodating, considering his trouble with believing him. The last thing he wanted was to be shunned from the group because of this.

"We'll see what Knightly has to tell us in the morning," Morgan said, getting off the bed. He ruffled Reid's hair and laughed as the other man scowled and fixed it. "You need to shower, Pretty Boy," he said, and Reid just barely resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at him, though he gave his hair a discreet sniff as Morgan left the room.

He showered and ate dinner, and avoided Hotch as best he could. He reviewed the case until he fell asleep, and entered dreams filled with vampires and angels and a pair of familiar brothers.

"It's true," he assured himself, holding a shotgun and leaning against Sam's sturdy back. "I'm not lying, I'm not crazy."

Sam whispered beside him, "It's true."


	8. Chapter 8

Notes: Wow! I was super inspired today! Cranked out a new chapter in a day! I'd like to quickly thank Greeniron for his/her review. I found the hardest parts of this last chapters to be trying to figure out how the team would take Reid telling them all this, but that review helped me flesh out and develop more parts for this chapter. Hopefully I've made this fic more believable without having to rewrite anything. So thanks!

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Reid awoke to find out that Morgan had already left for breakfast, and that Hotch and Rossi were talking just outside his closed door.

"I'm not saying that he's lying for a petty reason like that, David," Hotch said, his voice muffled by the door as Reid crept closer. "But we have to understand the circumstances here."

"What reason would he have to lie to us anyway?" Rossi said. "I'm just saying that there are some things we can't explain, not with all the scientific reasoning in the world. And I'm also saying that there was no sign of another person in the house when Knightly or any of the other victims were attacked. He was talking to us on the phone when he was attacked and it would pretty hard for an unsub to jam razor blades down his throat without him noticing. All of that together adds up to some strange circumstances that wouldn't be hard to interpret as a supernatural phenomenon, especially to someone who can remember every word of a large series they're a fan of."

"Reid's mother is a paranoid schizophrenic, Dave," Hotch sighed, and Reid felt his heart stop at the words. "There's a chance he could have inherited the disorder and that this whole thing is part of his delusion."

"Well, is there a kind of test we could do to check?" Rossi asked, but Reid wasn't listening anymore.

Schizophrenia. Of course that's what their minds would jump to. If he looked at things with a clearer mind, Reid knew that he would have thought of that first. He shuffled away from the door and locked himself in the bathroom, running a shower for himself. He needed some time to himself, to put off the discussion with Hotch. Whatever argument he presented to the man would just sound like the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic. If he tried to backtrack from his witch theory, they'd probably still think he was delusional, just not so far gone that he couldn't step back and realize it was crazy.

But it was true, wasn't it? Reid hugged his arms around himself as he stepped into the hot spray of water. Forty percent of men diagnosed with schizophrenia manifested symptoms before the age of nineteen. He ran through the list of symptoms in his head, certain that he had only ever experienced hallucinations when he had been drugged, and his thoughts and speech were always rather organized, so he was certain he hadn't experienced anything like that. Not knowingly. Social withdrawal, sloppiness of dress and hygiene, and loss of motivation and judgement were common in the disorder. His clothes were always neat, though he would sometimes be distracted, and while the team sometimes criticized him about the dangerous situations he got himself into, he didn't lack for motivation. And his issues with social interactions simply stemmed from his troubled childhood.

He ran his fingers through his hair, not bothering to use shampoo since he had done so the other night. He was scared. He knew that his list of symptoms were for schizophrenia in general, but paranoid schizophrenics were a specific kind. If he had been having delusions, they would have been organized and coherent, and he wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them and real life. He had an understanding of what his mother went through, and he hadn't been able to take care of her.

Prentiss had been the only one to tell him she believed him. Why had she? Did she really believe him? Reid didn't know enough about her and her background to know what her beliefs were. He didn't know if she believed in monsters before the case, or if she really did just think that Reid had no reason to lie. Did she even know about his mother? She had been on the team for a while, longer than Rossi, but that didn't mean they knew a lot about each other. Had she simply been humouring him?

Morgan had been nice enough, joking with him and quoting _Harry Potter_ before they went to bed, but he could have just been playing into his delusion. The team would play along, lightly joking with him as they observed his behaviour, and soon enough they'd trick him into a sanitarium just like he had locked away his own mother. He hoped they would place him in Bennington. If he was going to be trapped inside his mind for the rest of his life, he wanted to do it alongside his mother.

He finished his shower and got dressed, hearing a knock at the door. He swallowed hard and finished buttoning up his shirt, haphazardly tucking it into his pants as he walked to the door. He opened it, not ready to face Hotch but finding no excuse to put it off, and found JJ standing in the hallway. She smiled sweetly at him.

"I'm not crazy," he said before he could stop himself. JJ looked surprised, but her face softened and she reached out to grip his arm.

"Spence," she said, her voice full of careful concern. "Nobody thinks you're crazy. But you have to admit, unloading the theory that our unsub is a witch is pretty shocking, you know?"

She was being so nice. She was probably the one they would use to convince him to go to the sanitarium. He cracked a smile that he hoped didn't let on any of his worry, but judging from the quick hug she gave him, it didn't work.

"Let's go see Knightly, okay?" she said, and Reid nodded. Knightly. Whatever his testimony was, Reid should get his answers from that. The rest of the team would know what to do with him, and they'd probably find out more about their unsub. A live victim would give them all the answers they needed.

He rode with JJ, who informed him that Hotch would be at the hospital as well, and that everyone else was at the station. They grabbed a quick breakfast and a piping hot coffee along the way, which Reid dutifully added seven packets of sugar too, stirring it without looking anywhere other than the swirling beverage. They got back in the SUV and Reid continued avoiding all eye contact while trying to pretend that nothing was wrong.

Hotch met with them in the lobby and Reid kept his head down. He could feel the man's stare boring into his head and he self-consciously scratched his still damp scalp. JJ left to talk with a nurse and Reid was painfully aware of how much was at stake. No matter what scenario played through his head, he was sure to at least lose his job. He wondered if it would have been much different if Garcia had been the one to tell Knightly to burn the hex bag. She didn't have the family history of schizophrenia, so they would have just thought she had gotten way too into the _Supernatural_ world after getting a chance to meet the author. There would have been a high chance of her losing her job, but her skills made her highly valued, so she probably would have been kept, just placed on a short leash. Far better than his chances.

"Reid," Hotch began, and Reid stopped him before he could talk any more.

"I know what you're going to say," he blurted out hastily. "My mom's a paranoid schizophrenic, and it's entirely possible that I've inherited the disorder and that my outbursts yesterday were the result of a delusion. They didn't feel like delusions to me, but I suppose I wouldn't be looking at it objectively." He gave a twisted smile, still staring at the buffed floors. "I won't let anything like it happen again and I'll accept whatever decisions you make about my employment status."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement that indicated Hotch had given him a small nod. "I'll be keeping you under observation," the other man said, his voice stern as he did what was best for the team. "This is the first indication I've had about any symptoms, but we can't allow something like that to happen again."

"I know," Reid said softly, and there was a moment before he felt Hotch's hand land on his shoulder.

"We're going to see Knightly now," Hotch said, and Reid could hear the familiar clacking of JJ's heels coming closer. "Remember to think about everything before you say or do anything."

Reid cleared his throat and lifted his head, his lips pressed in a thin attempt at a smile. "Right," he said, nodding at Hotch, who released his shoulder with a gentle pat. JJ walked up to the two of them and reported that Knightly was awake and hadn't been moved from his room. They rode the elevator up and made their way into room 207, where the brown-haired officer was pulling up the edges of the mattress to look under it, then moving on to strip search his pillow.

"Hey," JJ greeted softly, smiling lightly at the man as he finished his search and gave an answering smile. "What are you doing?"

"Making sure there's no more of those damn hex bags slipped in here," he answered, double-checking under the mattress. "I keep feeling lumps in this bed and I can't tell if they're supposed to be there or if this unsub snuck in to try and finish me off."

"Have you found any?"

"No, but it still ain't putting my mind to rest," Knightly grumbled, patting the mattress back into place and settling down. His neck was wrapped in bandages and he spoke quietly and soft, trying not to aggravate his wounds even more. The group could see more bandages peeking out from the top of his hospital gown, likely covering the scars from the surgery.

"Could you tell us what happened after you found the hex bag under your mattress?" Hotch asked. Knightly sighed and rubbed a hand over his face.

"Not much to say. I mean, I called you guys right after, and I picked it up. I was feeling real tired around there, and then my throat started hurting. I didn't see anyone or hear anyone, and I just sorta collapsed on the floor. It was hurting so much, and then I coughed out a load of blood, and then some more and it was getting hard to breathe. I could feel the blade sliding outta my throat, and then I heard you say 'Burn it' and I was thinking 'Well, this shit don't make any sense right now, so it couldn't hurt'. So I grabbed my lighter and burned the bag, and the fire was _blue_. I could have been hallucinating, I guess, but it looked so real." He sighed and clasped his hands together. "Then the pain stopped. Well, it was still painful, but it stopped spreading, and I stopped coughing up blood, so whatever it was that happened to me stopped. And I just lay there until everyone came by and shipped me off here."

"And you didn't see any assailant?" Hotch asked, frowning. Knightly shook his head.

"Stir crazy, I know, but I swear there wasn't anyone in my bedroom. But I think I know who did it," he added darkly, sitting up a little straighter. Everyone was paying full attention. "Vanessa Barsky. She stopped me at the bar the other night, just after I entered. She told me to be careful with the case, because I was painting a target on my back, but I was tired and I didn't realize she was a suspect. I told some of the boys, but then Pestle was presented as the perfect suspect and I pushed the encounter to the back of my mind. But I have had a nice, long, drug-induced sleep and I am thinking clearly enough to _strongly_ suggest you look into her."

"We'll do that," Hotch said, giving Knightly a grateful nod and walking out of the room. JJ smiled and wished him well, following after their leader. Reid turned to follow, but Knightly stopped him.

"You're the one that told me to burn the thing, yeah?" he asked, and Reid cleared his throat nervously.

"Y-yeah?"

"Thanks, kid," he said, then laid back in his bed, shifting the sheets. Reid smiled nervously and nodded, jogging after the other two. Hotch had pulled out his cell phone and was talking to Morgan, naming Vanessa Barsky as the next suspect. The following few hours were spent looking into her relations with the victims. She was already a black-listed author, and the team knew she had a one night relationship with Michael Conner, something the others at the bar noted she wasn't happy about. A look into the diner revealed that she had flirted with Andrew Calmer, but had been rejected because of his marriage, and had a brief relationship with William Gull that was mostly speculation because Gull had a girlfriend at the time.

Reid stayed at the station when they went to bring her in for questioning. He sat in a chair and flipped through papers he wasn't reading while Garcia hovered near him, occasionally whispering things like, "They'll figure out you're telling the truth" and "I'm going to get some doughnuts, do you want some doughnuts?" which was comforting. Unless he was suffering from a delusion where everybody besides Garcia thought he was delusional, he was in the clear.

Prentiss called them to inform everyone that Barsky had gone quietly, only requesting a simple phone call where she told someone named Mullin that she was being arrested. She and Morgan were pawing through her belongings and reported that there was definitely a lot of witchy paraphernalia all over the place. She cut herself off quickly, and Reid fidgeted in his seat, tapping the now-silent phone against the table.

Vanessa Barsky was a plain and pretty woman with long, strawberry blonde hair and green eyes. She smiled pleasantly as she was led into the station and offered 'hello's to everyone who looked at her. Which was strange, considering she had to know she was brought there as a suspect. Hotch took her to the interrogation room and Reid slunk low in his seat. He wanted to at least watch the interrogation, find out what she was going to say, if she had anything to say about the supernatural world, but he was already on thin ice. He didn't want to do anything that Hotch wouldn't approve of.

So he waited, joining Garcia in a quick game of cards until Hotch came out. Reid cleared his throat nervously, placing his cards down. "What did she say?"

"She admitted to being the unsub," he said with a sigh. "Says she was killing the lovers that spurned her, until Vincent Carter made her angry enough to find another reason to kill. She also claims to be a witch, and very calmly told me that Mullin would be coming to get her soon."

Reid cleared his throat again, not sure what to say. It was obvious from Hotch's tone that he didn't really believe she was a witch. "Mullin, isn't that who she called before police took her into custody?"

"Really?" Hotch sighed, his voice weary.

"Mm-hm," Garcia said, shuffling the deck of cards. "Prentiss called and said that Barsky promised to not kick up a fuss if they let her phone someone. And I'm sure no one wanted a repeat of Ms. Pestle's arrest, so they let her. But they don't know who Mullin is. I don't remember seeing that name anywhere."

"Well, she won't tell me. Every time I ask, she just smiles and says 'You'll see'." He sighed and walked towards the station's coffee machine. Reid decided not to tell anyone that he had a bad feeling about that. Garcia didn't share his concern.

"I have a bad feeling about this," she whispered to him. "What if there's another witch out there?"

Reid shrugged, then jumped a little when he heard his phone ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket, but didn't recognize the number.

"Hello?" he asked, glancing away from Garcia. He could see through the window that Morgan and Prentiss's SUV was driving up the street.

"_Hey, uh, Dr. Reid? It's Chuck,"_ the author's voice was clear despite the bustle of background noise on both ends.

"Oh, uh, Chuck, hey," Reid replied, and he could see Garcia's face light up. He turned away from her and the window.

"_Okay, so, Dean and Sam are here and, uh, well, they're not thrilled to meet you, but they're willing, so..."_

"Really?" Reid said, a smile crossing his face.

"_Yeah, I mean, they came for the witch, but..."_

"We have her in custody."

"_Really?"_ Chuck spluttered, and Reid smiled again and turned back around. The SUV was parked in front of the station, and there was a man getting out.

"Yeah," Reid replied, distracted. The man getting out of the SUV was definitely not Morgan. It was a young Asian man with stylishly tousled black hair. He walked around to the back of the car, opening the doors.

"_Dr. Reid? Everything okay?"_

"I don't think so..." he murmured. The man pulled two things out of the back, but the doors obscured what they were, and the window only showed so much. But soon the man had closed the doors and was walking up to the station doors, dragging something behind him.

The doors opened without him touching them, slamming against the wall with a loud bang that grabbed the attention of everyone in the station. Reid took in a sharp breath and he heard Garcia gasp beside him as the man walked in, the limp forms of Morgan and Prentiss trailing behind him.

"Hello, police officers!" he yelled, a large grin spreading across his lips. "I've come to pick up my sweetie!"

Reid froze as he looked at the man's face and saw the jet black eyes.

"Demon," he whispered. "There's a demon in the police station."


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

The phone erupted into static, cutting off Chuck's reply of _"Demon? What are you-" _and Reid dropped the phone onto the desk. Every single officer in the station had whipped out their guns and pointed them at the man. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Hotch had done the same. Garcia was half-hidden behind the desk, peering fearfully at the demon still gripping Morgan and Prentiss's wrists.

The demon chuckled. "So predictable," he purred. "You humans do love your guns."

"Place the agents down and put your hands up," the officer closest to the demon spoke, the gun aimed at his nose.

The demon put on an exaggerated pout, but his still-black eyes sparkled with mirth. "I just want to see my sweetie. You may know her, Vanessa? Vanessa Barsky? You couldn't have arrested her more than a half hour ago? I would have been here sooner, but I had a few things to set up."

He smiled and dropped Prentiss's arm, but yanked Morgan upwards, his shoulder dislocating with a resounding _crack_. The demon caught him by the back of his neck, holding him up with one hand. Morgan had jolted awake from the sudden pain, but he was still woozy.

Garcia gripped Reid's hand, her fingers trembling. Reid squeezed back, knowing how hard this was for her. She was used to hearing about the dangers her team went through, and even when she watched Reid getting tortured it was through a computer screen. This was in personal, and she still couldn't do anything to stop it.

"If you don't want me to snap his neck," the demon said, practically shoving Morgan in front of him, blocking ninety percent of the guns trained on him. "Someone had better get me Vanessa."

There was a tense silence, but a silent confirmation to get the woman was passed around, and one officer left for the interrogation room. The demon grinned toothily and gave Morgan a quick shake when the man jolted in his grip. The man gritted his teeth as his arm flopped around uselessly.

A soft clacking of heels made its way down the corridor and into the lobby, and soon Vanessa strolled out, the officer trailing behind her. The blonde woman grinned at the sight and quickened her pace at the sight of the demon.

"Mullin," she cried out as she got closer. "Darling, you made it!"

Mullin tossed Morgan onto the ground beside Prentiss and caught Vanessa with one arm, giving her a quick twirl as he leaned in close. "Someone has to fix your mistakes. Tell me _why_ the police were able to catch you?"

Vanessa frowned and crossed her arms. "My last spell was interrupted. The officer lived."

The demon laughed and tangled his fingers in her hair, his grip tightening until her head was tilted back. "I taught you better than that, _sweetie_." The term of endearment sounded like acid.

Vanessa scowled darkly and winced as he gave one last tug of her hair before releasing it. "It wasn't my fault," he muttered sourly. "He burned it."

"And let me guess, you hadn't thought to get an extra scrap of clothing?"

"Whatever! Let's just go already!" she snapped, though she drew back as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Mullin rolled his eyes. At least, Reid assumed that he did, since the demon had yet to turn off his black eyes. It was likely a fear tactic of his, to unnerve his human opponents. It was working on the officers, who were still pointing guns at him, but had all shuffled backwards.

"You can try to leave, but I want to have a little fun," Mullin said, the playful smirk back on his face. "You tore me away from a threesome. I need to be entertained."

"What?" Vanessa shrieked, and she walked past him to the door. She got no more than a foot outside before she was repelled back in. "You put up a shield?"

"Nobody can get in or out of this station," he said gleefully, looking at all the officers in the room. "I'll let you all have a five minute head start, but if I find you-" He raised a hand and locked eyes with the officer nearest him. He gave a quick twist of his hand and the officer's head twisted around so fast and far that his skin ripped. The officer crumbled to the ground, eyes popped wide open.

There were screams, but they were quickly drowned out by the sharp _bang bang bang_ as everyone unloaded their clips into the demon. Vanessa yelped and hid behind Mullin, who simply laughed as bullets entered his skin. He held out a hand to stop some of the bullets from getting through, but the placement indicated he was only doing so for Vanessa's benefit.

Reid knew this was pointless. They were wasting ammunition on a being they hadn't even known existed. He searched his memory for ways to kill a demon. If they had the Colt, it would be easy. Hotch could easily make the kill shot while they distracted the demon. But they didn't have the Colt, nor the knife that would work just as well. They didn't have angels on their side, and even though it sounded like Chuck heard there was a demon at the station, the shield around them would keep the Winchesters out.

The sounds of guns died down, replaced by the demon's laughter. "Your five minutes start now!" he called out, and he took Vanessa's hand and they strolled down the corridor. Chaos erupted in the lobby as officers asked each other what was going on, and numerous attempts at leaving through both the door and windows were made. Officer Emory stopped by Morgan and helped jam his shoulder back into position.

Garcia rushed to his side, Reid trailing after her. Prentiss started waking up, and Reid was able to see the blood caked in her hair. "What's going on?" she mumbled, raising herself onto her knees. She gingerly touched her scalp, wincing as she felt her wound. "I was just talking to you, we were back at the house..."

"Some guy got the jump on us," Morgan growled, his dark face turned pale from the pain in his arm. Emory gently patted his uninjured shoulder. "Was I hallucinating, or were his eyes _black_?"

"If you were hallucinating, so was everyone else," Garcia said, hovering worriedly over the two agents on the floor.

Hotch had been trying to organize the officers, but too many of them had broken off and left either on their own or in small groups to search the rest of the building for an escape. Three officers stuck with him, though one was a shivering, shaking mess. JJ and Rossi slunk out from the corridor by the interrogation room. They had heard a commotion and seen the officer that freed Vanessa escort her down the hall. Rossi and Hotch had a whispered conversation while JJ did her best to calm the female officer that was closest to breaking down.

The whole group walked over to where Morgan and Prentiss were gathering themselves together. Hotch knelt down next to Reid, glancing at him occasionally and taking in breaths that made it sound like he was going to start speaking, but he stayed silent. The heavy silence that hung in the lobby was broken by the female officer who was still shaking like a leaf.

"What was that thing?" she hissed, her voice trembling. Reid looked at her, quickly reading a name tag that told him her name was Quinn. "His eyes..." He glanced down on the ground. He wanted to tell them, but didn't know whether or not he would be met with the same reaction that his witch revelation encountered. He could feel Hotch's gaze burning the side of his head.

"That was a demon," Garcia spoke up after a moment, looking at Hotch as though she dared him to disagree. "That was a demon, probably the one that gave Vanessa Barsky her witchy powers."

Quinn nearly burst into tears right then and there, but managed to just let out a wet, squeaky wail. Officer Carr beside her wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders, and Quinn just buried her face in the crook of the other woman's neck, doing her best to hold herself together. Reid didn't dare look into anyone's eyes, nervously tapping his fingernails against the concrete floor.

"I've seen some crazy shit in my time here," Emory said, sighing beside him. "But this is my first time seeing a demon..." He sounded resigned, but not disbelieving. Reid chanced a glance at the man's face and was rewarded with a twisted smile.

"How do we stop it?" Hotch said, and Reid swung his head around to look at Hotch. The other man was grim face, but determined, and Reid had to suppose he had seen enough evidence to believe that there was something supernatural there. The twisted corpse of the dead officer still lay mere yards away from them, silent proof that something bad happened.

There were murmured sounds of agreement from around him, and Reid saw Garcia giving him a look. Reid cleared his throat and spoke up. "Well, we don't have any weapons that can kill a demon, but there are ways of incapacitating it. The strongest would be a devil's trap, but the books didn't illustrate the best way to make one, so I don't think it'll be much help. Salt and iron work well against them. If we surround ourselves in a salt circle, the demon shouldn't be able to get us. However, Barsky is still human, so none of those apply to her."

"But regular human rules apply?" Morgan asked, finally getting to his feet. He tried to get out his gun, but the pain in his arm stopped that motion.

"Yes," Reid nodded, and Morgan gave a grim nod.

"Then she's not our priority," he said. The loudspeaker crackled above them and the dark tones of Mullin's voice drifted through the static.

"_Your five minutes are up,"_ he said. _"Time for hide and go seek."_

"We should gather as many people as we can," Rossi said, looking around at the empty lobby. "See if we can't find some salt or whatever."

"There's a few bags of rock salt stored for the winter," the other officer, his tag reading 'Wolfes', said. "But I don't know what's made of iron in this building."

"Well, one thing at a time," Hotch said. He helped Prentiss get to her feet and checked his pistol. Reid could feel the gentle press of his own revolver against his hip, but he knew it wouldn't be much help. Everyone had seen how many bullets the demon had taken; the loose cartridges were scattered all over the floor. It would serve as nothing more than a distraction, but it was a source of comfort, he supposed.

Wolfes led the way to a supply room that was filled with cleaning equipment. There were two fat bags of rock salt they grabbed, and Reid did a quick scan of the room for anything else that would be useful. He paused when he saw a janitorial bucket still filled with water, then quickly turned to the others.

"Does anyone have a rosary on them?" he asked, and was met with shaking heads and negative responses until Quinn stepped up. She pulled a rosary from under her uniform and handed it over. He nodded his thanks and dropped it into the bucket.

"_Exorcizo te, creatura aquæ, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis,_" he began praying, reciting the words he had memorized. He rattled off the Latin blessing as fast as he could, and Garcia grabbed empty water bottles from a pile in the corner and placed them next to him. The others kept an ear out on the other side of the door, where an eerie silence had fallen over the station. "_Per Dominum, amen,_" he finished the blessing and grabbed a bottle, filling it up with the holy water. He did the same to the others, until all the water in the bucket was gone, and Garcia handed a bottle to each person.

"Let me guess," JJ said, accepting her bottle. "Holy water?"

"It'll burn the demon," Garcia said, nodding. "Also, he can totally switch hosts, so if we encounter someone acting all suspicious-like, just say _Christo_. If the person flinches, they're possessed by a demon."

"Great," Prentiss muttered, looking at her water. "Of all the stories that had to be real, we have to deal with the one that involves demons and witches out to kill us. Why couldn't it have been _Twilight_? At least there the worst we'd have to deal with would be super-powered angsting teenagers."

Her comment was met with a few chuckles, but Reid just wandered over to the window. It was open, likely from another officer who had tried to escape through it. He gently moved his hand through the space, feeling for the barrier. He could feel it, like an elastic band pulled taut, waiting for him to press further in so it could snap back. Reid pulled his hand away and looked outside.

He could hear sirens in the background, likely from officers outside the building that had gotten a call from someone inside. If he stretched his head to the side, he could look up the alleyway and see people walking by, shooting confused looks towards the station. He heard a soft swear and whispered words to his side, so Reid turned his head around, peering down the other end of the alley, where he could see a tall, dark haired man slinking in the shadows with his shorter companion wearing a leather jacket.

Reid gasped and shoved his head out further, trying to get a better look, but the barrier repelled him. He yelped and was flung backwards into Emory's chest. The officer steadied him while the group looked at him with worry.

"What's going on?" JJ asked, her eyes darting between Reid and the window.

"It's them!" he gasped excitedly, shoving himself from the officer's arms now that he was steady. "Sam and Dean!"

Garcia gasped and the rest of the team looked at each other in confusion as they tried to recall what was so important about those names. Reid returned to the window, making sure his head didn't stick out too far this time. The men were closer, either deaf to Reid's earlier yelp or worried about it.

"Hey," he hissed, grabbing their attention. "Sam? Dean?"

The brothers looked wary, and Reid saw Sam's hand clench around the knife in his hand while Dean raised his pistol up a little higher.

"Who are you?" Dean demanded.

"Spencer Reid, I talked with Chuck earlier," he said, starting to get excited. He was face to face with his rescuers again, and while the situation was far less than ideal, they now had two professional demon hunters there.

A flicker of recognition flashed in their eyes. "Right," Dean said. "So what's the situation in there?"

"We arrested a witch, Vanessa Barsky, but a demon named Mullin came to get her. He's sealed off the station and has already killed at least one officer."

"Demons tend to like playing with their prey," Sam muttered, looking around. The sound of sirens were louder now, and Reid could see a flash of light as one cruiser drove past the entrance to the alley.

"I hate these damn witchy demons," Dean growled. "We'll figure out some way to break the barrier. You guys focus on getting safe. Find whatever salt, iron-"

"We're covered," Garcia chirped, moving to stand beside Reid and waving her water bottle. "We've even got holy water."

"Theoretically," Reid said softly. "We haven't had the chance to test it out."

"Let's hope you don't need to test it out," Sam said, flashing them a reassuring smile. Reid nodded, then paused as a thought occurred to him.

"Hold on a minute," he mumbled as he bent over to shuffle through his bag. He pulled out a pen and straightened up, lightly tossing the item through the window. It landed on Dean's head, and the man muttered a few curses and bent to pick it up.

"What was that about?"

Reid just bent over again and pulled some files out of his bag. "We can't cross the barrier," he said, holding a stack of paper through the window. "But items can. I'd like you to draw me a devil's trap. The strongest one there is."

Sam took the papers and looked at him oddly. "What?"

"The salt could be all we need, but it would be best to cover all our bases. I've read the _Supernatural_ books, but there was no clear illustration on what a devil's trap looks like. There was a simple version which might suffice, but in _Malleus Maleficarum_ the demon Tammi was a rather strong black-eyed demon, and so it would be best to work under the assumption that it had something to do with her ties to witches, so I think it would be a good idea to use the strongest devil's trap we can make to ensure that Mullin doesn't kill us all."

The brothers blinked at him, then Dean shrugged and grabbed one of the papers, flipping over the list of suspects they didn't need anymore and uncapping the pen to quickly draw a detailed devil's trap. Sam looked at Reid, squinting in the darkness at his face.

"You're the guy that Raphael kidnapped, aren't you?"

"Technically, Tobias Hankel kidnapped me," Reid said automatically. "But Raphael almost killed me, yeah."

Sam nodded. "Good to see you're okay," he said. "And that you're taking this all rather well."

"I had some time to let it sink in," he answered, and gave his team a quick glance. They were spaced out throughout the small room, but most stayed by the door, talking in hushed whispers. They were scared, he could tell, but determined. They were faced with something they didn't understand, but it was their job to deal with the monsters of the world. It had just taken on a more literal term.

"Alright," Dean said, holding the paper out as far as he could go. Reid took it with a nod, ignoring the fact Dean hadn't returned his pen. The marks on the paper were clear and large, compensating for the fact they were a little wiggly from the texture of the brick wall Dean had drawn against. But he could use this.

The brothers bid him and Garcia a quick goodbye, promising to figure out how Mullin had trapped the station. Reid silently hoped he would have the chance to properly thank them later. He turned from the window, scanning the room for supplies. He grabbed a few fat markers and a spray can full of paint, stuffing the items in his bag.

"We have to find a secure room," he said, looking at Hotch. The man nodded and looked at the others.

"The interrogation room only has one entrance," he said. "It'll be the easiest to fortify. We'll set up there, then separate into teams to search for the other officers and bring them back to base. Keep an eye out for anything iron while we go."

The group nodded and they carefully made their way out of the supply room. Reid brought up the rear, one hand on his gun loose in the holster, the other gripping his water bottle with the lid half screwed off. They all glanced around them, searching the corridors for any dangers. It wasn't quiet, with the sirens and yells of officers outside echoing through the halls, but there was a stillness in the air. Reid gripped his gun a little tighter.

The hunt was on.


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

Both Mullin and Vanessa were absent from the hallways, and they only found a few officers on the way to the interrogation room. The found the first two around the first corner, two bodies splayed on the ground, an aggressive splattering of blood decorating both walls and the floor. The four officers in their group displayed visible reactions to their comrades deaths, but everyone continued onwards.

They opened every door they passed, clearing the room before returning to their journey. They found another officer dead in one of the offices, her neck slit over the desk. A few doors down they found a live officer, a man identified as 'Spike' when Carr saw him and ran into the room. The man had obviously encountered the demon, his backwards leg a testament to that.

"Just wanted to fuckin' _play_ with me," Spike growled, accepting Garcia's shoulder to lean against. "I was with Orion and Madison, but they got dragged off by something. And that bitch witch stole my gun."

They saw another officer before they reached the interrogation room, but he was flipping out and just screamed at them when Hotch tried to calm him down. The man flipped them off, swore at them, and ran down the hallway they had just come from.

The group made it to the interrogation room without running into Mullin or Vanessa, and they shuffled into the center of the room with a vaguely lost feeling. Spike was laid onto the floor, propped up against the wall and shifted into a position where his backwards leg wasn't agitated. Endorphins were keeping him from curling in on himself in a sobbing mess, but Reid could see the thin sheen of sweat and the pale pallor of his face that he hadn't noticed when they were on the move.

There was a moment of silence before Prentiss cleared her throat. Reid looked up at her, then noticed all the eyes on him. He shifted nervously under their gaze as he realized they were looking to him to find out what to do. He was the one who knew what was going on, and he was the one that needed to lead them.

He swallowed a thickness in his throat and spoke up, cursing the crackle that escaped with his first words, "We need to make a salt line. We can do that for the hallway, seal off this corridor. Um, I'll reinforce the room with some devil's traps, so, um, just sit tight."

He knew he wasn't very convincing as a leader, that they needed someone more fearless than him to look up to, but Reid couldn't pretend. He was scared. He was facing against one of the strongest supernatural creatures there were out there for the first time, and he was severely unprepared. The only way they could defeat the demon themselves would be through an exorcism, which would be difficult to manage even if they lured him into a devil's trap. Dean and Sam were trapped outside of the building, with their magic bullets and demon-killing knife, and while they would probably find a way to get through the barrier, there was no way to know how long it would take.

Reid directed Wolfes and Emory towards where he wanted the salt line, making sure to tell everyone that it was not to be broken even slightly. He walked towards the two way mirror the looked into the interrogation room and pulled out the piece of paper Dean had drawn on. He uncapped the smelly marker and started on the devil's trap, glancing at the paper to make sure he was getting it right. He wasn't sure if putting the trap on the window would do any good, but it was good practice and let himself calm down, stop his hands from shaking so much.

The officers had finished salting a three inch thick line across the narrow hallway by the time Reid was starting on writing the letters in the outer circle. They peered over his shoulders at them, but offered no distractions other than a quick clap on the shoulder before they turned to the hallway and kept a careful eye out for any movement.

Eventually, Reid was satisfied with his circle and moved to do the same in the doorway, filling up all the space possible. The ambient sounds were muffled in that corridor, and the squeaking of his marker seemed too obnoxious in the tense silence. JJ walked over, her heels too loud, and she crouched across from him on the other side of the circle.

"Hey," she said softly. "How are you holding up?"

"Fine," he said shortly, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear. "Understandably freaked out, but at least now I know I'm not crazy." He glanced up at her with a self-deprecating smile, turning his real relief into a little joke. JJ smiled sadly and nodded, pursing her lips.

"Are our chances of survival good?" she whispered, her voice almost too soft for him to hear.

Reid hesitated, giving his devil's trap his full attention as he tried to make his pentacle's lines as straight and smooth as possible. "I don't know," he said after a short silence, his voice as quiet as JJ's had been. "There aren't any surveys done about the statistics of supernatural attacks, and the only chance we have of killing the demon ourselves is to exorcise it."

"Could we do that?"

He shrugged. "Potentially. I mean, I know the words, but unless we actually trap the demon in one of these devil's traps, he'll be able to attack me mid-exorcism. Our best chance is to gather as many people as we can save and keep them here until the Winchesters break the barrier and kill the demon themselves."

JJ was silent, eyes downcast as she watched Reid finish off the scorpion in the center of the trap. She sighed heavily, then looked up at him with a tired smile. "So you know how to perform an exorcism?"

Reid flushed. "I may have looked it up after I came to the conclusion that the supernatural existed."

JJ chuckled and patted his shoulder, standing up as she did so. Reid glanced up and stopped her. "Wait, since you're up," He paused to shuffle around in his bag and pulled out the can of spray paint. "Could you cover the two-way mirror with this? I don't want anyone to be able to spy on us without our knowledge."

"Good idea," she said as she took the can. She shook it as she walked away, the clacking sound echoing throughout the room. Reid finished up with the devil's trap as she began spraying the black paint all over the mirror and re-entered the room, stepping over the trap so as to not smudge any of the still wet lines.

He walked to the congregation of agents and officers who seemed to be discussing what formations they should use when searching the building. Spike couldn't go anywhere on that leg of his, and Morgan's arm was still causing him trouble, so it was obvious they would be staying in the interrogation room. Garcia would as well, and while Quinn had composed herself well enough, she was too scared to leave.

"We'll go in groups of four," Hotch said. "That should give us enough people to cover all directions and remain relatively safe. Reid, Emory, Prentiss, and I will head out first and start trying to find survivors. JJ, Wolfes, Carr, and Rossi will stay back here until necessary. Keep an eye out for any movement."

There was some argument, mostly from Morgan who insisted he was well enough to leave the room, but eventually they all agreed that Hotch's plan was best. JJ returned from the mirror, which Reid glanced at. It was completely covered, paint reaching out to coat the edges of the wall the window was framed in. Nobody would be able to use to watch them without their knowledge, and the dark paint obscured the devil's trap on the other side without breaking the drawing. He didn't know how effective it would be at capturing the demon, since it wasn't something the man would step on or under, but it was better than nothing.

The two officers outside returned when called and agreed to the plan. Wolfes returned to his position a foot inside the salt line, his gun drawn and bottle of holy water in hand. Emory led Reid, Hotch, and Prentiss out of the room, all of them careful not to smudge any of their protections. They walked slowly down the hall, guns held at the ready. Reid held his water bottle out instead, keeping only one hand on his gun, knowing what would do the most damage if face-to-face with Mullin.

The first corridor was clear, which was no surprise, as it was the one they had previously walked through. They branched off into a different direction, heading towards the chief's office, if Emory's directions were to be believed, and looking into rooms as they passed. They found empty rooms more often than not, but there were more corpses than survivors. The first body they found had all his limbs twisted and a number of cuts randomly crisscrossing over his body. They were too shallow for his death to have been quick, but he thought the man might have passed out from the pain and bled to death while unconscious.

The second body was less like a body and more like a mess. Blood splattered the entire room, and fleshy globs hung from the chairs and lamps. The third body they found in the hallway, and she was simply riddled with bullets.

"Madison," Emory growled, looking at the expression on the older woman's face, her chocolate brown hair pillowed behind her. It was one of the officers that had been with Spike.

"Her gun's missing," Prentiss noted, her eyes roving swiftly over the body.

"Spike said his gun was taken by Vanessa," Hotch said. "It's likely she was the one to kill Madison."

"Her damn witchcraft wasn't good enough for her?" Emory said, turning his back on the body, his eyes looking down the corridor, searching for anything to distract him from his murdered comrade.

"Vanessa probably won't be able to perform any witchcraft here," Reid said, looking around as well. "It requires magical items and rituals, and it's highly doubtful that either she or Mullin had the forethought or capabilities to bring any of the materials in with them."

"And she knew that," Prentiss said, nodding. "So she stole a couple of guns."

"Well at least that's a more normal unsub to deal with," Hotch muttered. "Let's keep going."

The next person they came across was alive. A rookie cop who was hiding in the bathroom, and shot at them when he heard them enter. Lucky for them, his panic made him a horrible shot, and there were only a few grazes. There was a silent agreement that he was to be taken straight to the safe room, so Prentiss talked to him and calmed him down so they could convince him to walk with them to a place he would be safe.

On the walk back they had to stop at one point, the sharp clack of footsteps echoing down the hall. The pace suggested a casual walk, so they were wary, but the footsteps faded without anyone seeing anything. They returned to the interrogation room, the officers giving each a slight wave upon catching each other's eyes. The group of four stepped back, letting their newest addition pass the salt line and the devil's trap first, breathing a sigh of relief when he passed without problem.

Garcia made a fuss when she saw Emory and Prentiss had gotten some bloodstains on their sleeves from their grazes, but they were thin and had already stopped bleeding. Reid suggested to Hotch they keep an eye out for any first aid equipment they might find. It was an easy agreement.

JJ walked up to him while the new officer was getting settled. She held the paint can in her hand. "I didn't know if you wanted it back."

Reid paused, but took it and stuffed it in his bag. "Might need it," he mumbled, flashing her a thankful smile.

The group of four returned to the corridors, but they held doubts about how many more survivors they would find. The sirens coming from outside showed that there were plenty of cops on shift that had been out on patrol, and there were only so many officers in the building. Seven were already confirmed dead. They had six working with them. More officers had been called on duty during the murders committed by Vanessa Barsky, but Reid doubted there were any more than five more officers in the building at the moment.

It wouldn't be long before the demon targeted their large group.

A scream pierced his thoughts, and the group surged forward, tracking the sound of a young man begging for his life. They rounded a corner and saw him, blond hair and freckled face firmly planted against the floor as he was dragged into a room. He was crying and clawing at the ground, scrambling for purpose. His eyes lifted and he saw the agents as he pressed against the door frame

"Please," he sobbed. "Help me!"

With a sharp tug, he was pulled into the room and out of sight, even as the group hurried closer. The wood of the door frame broke away from the wall, clasped in his hand. Reid clutched his water bottle even harder, the cap almost falling off from how loose it was.

They turned to the room, seeing Mullin perched on top of the chief's desk with his hand stretched out towards the wall, where the officer was pinned by an invisible force. The demon was looking at the agents in the doorway with a smirk on his face and a tilted head.

"My, my," he said, his soft voice practically purring the words. "Grouping together? Looks like you have better survival skills than most of these officers here."

"And the ones who do group together you rip apart, eh?" Emory spat out, his gun aimed at the demon's face. Reid glanced around, trying to figure out how he could get close enough to splash the holy water at the demon.

Mullin smiled and twitched his fingers, bringing the pinned officer into his hand. He held him by his jaw, but the man had his feet on the ground. "It's so much more fun, killing them off one-by-one. Little, stupid, ignorant humans who don't know how to defend themselves."

"Orion!" Emory shouted, lowering his gun to avoid hitting the struggling man.

Orion flailed, kicking his legs against the desk to push himself away from the demon, while he raised a hand to the grip on his jaw, trying vainly to pry the fingers off. Mullin grinned and squeezed even harder, a fingernail puncturing the man's cheek. Orion gave a strangled cry, then brought his other arm up to hit the demon's chest with the broken piece of door frame in his hand.

A piece of door frame that had been held together with iron nails.

The demon hissed and let go abruptly, tossing Orion away as he curled around his midsection. Reid didn't waste the chance and dashed forwards, tossing his holy water straight onto the demon's head. Smoke rose and Mullin cried out in pain.

"_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus omnis satanica potestas,_" Reid began saying, speaking as fast as he could while still pronouncing the words correctly. Mullin screamed and turned around, the flesh on his face still sizzling. He pushed out with one hand, shoving Reid across the room. He heard the other members of his team yell his name, then more screaming from Mullin.

He pulled himself up with a wince, his ribs bruised, and saw the other members of the group standing around Mullin, their water bottles at the ready and already half empty. He continued the exorcism chant.

"_Vade, Satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis. Humiliare sub potenti manu dei, contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine, quem inferi tremunt._"

Mullin snarled and threw his power around even as the exorcism sapped it away. Prentiss was thrown almost as far as Reid, but she rolled out of it and returned to the group even though her water bottle was empty. Orion had joined them, wielding his stick with the tiny iron nails in it. Mullin growled and shoved them all out of the way and leaped out of the way of another splash of water. He pinned Reid to the ground and snarled at him, a terrifying sight of black eyes and sizzling flesh. Black smoke was already starting to leak out of his mouth, barely held in by sheer force of will.

"Shut up!" he yelled, moving his hands to Reid's throat to stop the flow of Latin that kept coming out. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

Reid gasped for air. His teammates were either dazed on the floor, or trying to pull the demon off him while being repelled by the demon's power. His hands scrambled on the floor around him, hoping to find a bottle with at least a little water left in it. He felt a cylinder and grabbed it, but it was the can of spray paint, having rolled out of his bag upon his impact with the floor.

Having nothing else to do but be choked to death, Reid shook the can and brought it up to the demon's eyes, spraying the liquid straight into his face. Shocked, Mullin reeled backwards and Hotch was able to grab him and throw the demon away from Reid, who greedily sucked in air. He barely waited before he was sure he could talk without collapsing into a coughing mess before he continued the exorcism.

"_Terriblis Deus de sanctuario suo. Deus Israhel ipse truderit virtutem et fortitudinem plebi Suae,_" he gasped out, using Hotch as a crutch to get to his feet. "_Benedictus deus. Gloria patri._"

Mullin screamed and threw his head back, a jet of black smoke spewing from his mouth and falling downwards, dissipating into the floorboards beneath their feet. They watched warily until the vessel fell forwards, blood seeping from his numerous bullet holes.

"Is that it then?" Emory asked after a moment of silence.

Reid coughed, leaning heavily against Hotch. Judging from the worried look on his boss's face, he could only imagine how bad his neck looked. "Maybe," he said, worry niggling at the back of his mind. "Is the barrier still out there?"

Prentiss walked over to the window and jammed her hand outside. She was knocked onto her back, and everyone gave a small groan of frustration. She stood up and dusted herself off, wincing from the bruises Mullin inflicted on her. "There's still Vanessa out there, too. Unless someone else got her."

"We'll go back to the safe room," Hotch said. "Take a breather."

There was a round of agreement, though Emory had them wait a little while longer as he raided the chief of police's desk. He returned with some granola bars and bags of chips, as well as a small first aid kit, which they all packed into Reid's bag before they made their way out of the room.

Prentiss led, while Hotch followed, Reid still leaning against him for support. His legs felt like jelly and his throat and chest burned with every breath. Emory helped Orion along in the back, though the other man did not need as much help as Reid did. He clutched his piece of door frame like a sword and wiped away dried tears as they walked.

"I just want this to be over," he mumbled to Emory as they walked, and the other man squeezed his arm.

"It will be."


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Reid suggested they stop by the bathroom on their way back to the safe room, remembering Quinn's rosary still tucked away in his pocket, ready to mix up a new batch of holy water just in case. But Hotch just looked at his throat and shook his head. They would have time for that later.

The group was alerted when Rossi, who had taken a post next to Carr as lookout, saw them and said worriedly, "What the hell happened to you guys?"

"We ran into the demon," Prentiss said, stepping over the salt line. She could see everyone inside the room hurry to their feet. "Reid managed to exorcise him, though."

There was a collective sigh of relief, and Reid stepped over the salt line himself, now capable of walking without assistance. He hurried into the room and set himself up in a corner, a few feet away from where Spike was propped up. It was useless to try and hide the growing bruises around his neck, especially since Hotch would just tell everyone what happened, but he didn't want anyone fussing over him.

He pulled out the first aid kit, painfully small but still useful, and the snacks. There was no telling how long they'd stay there, so they'd have to ration. He wasn't hungry himself, and he figured the Winchesters would get everything wrapped up in less than a day – given their track record – but it was good to have a plan.

"Hey, Reid?"

He looked up to see Garcia standing over him. The angle of his chin fully exposed his neck, and Garcia made a little sound in the back of her throat at the sight, her already worried face softening with sympathy.

"How're you doing?" she asked, nervously tugging at the end of her bright shirt.

Reid smiled up at her. "I'm fine. Did you hear I exorcised a demon?"

Garcia giggled, almost nervously. "I did hear. I'm very proud of you."

Reid smiled and gestured to the items in front of him. "We've got some food and first aid, and holy water is safe for us to drink, though we should refill the bottles that were used. Just in case."

Garcia frowned. "You shouldn't go outside the room, though, not after... that," she said, gesturing wildly at her neck. "Can you write down the blessing for one of us to say?"

Reid paused, then wrinkled his nose. "I don't have a pen."

"Oh," she said, disappointment in her voice. He wondered if she had been hoping to show her skill with the supernatural. She shrugged and turned to sit down beside him, looking out over everyone else in the room.

Hotch and Prentiss were regaling the rest of the team, along with Wolfes, with a play-by-play account of what happened with Mullin. Emory was just visible outside the room, standing guard next to Carr. Quinn and Orion were hovering over Spike, and the two men had shared a relieved reunion while Orion tried to avoid talking about Madison. The rookie they had found in the bathroom, now calm enough to introduce himself as Tanaka, was curled up in a corner. He was mumbling to himself, and if Reid listened hard enough he could hear that the man was trying to convince himself that this was all a dream.

Everyone took some time to relax the best they could, and they all poked around the first aid kit to take inventory of what they had. The ice pack was actually a little cold, so they passed it over to Spike. They didn't have the tools to return his leg to its proper position, but they could reduce the swelling. Most of their injuries consisted of bruises, but there was nothing in the kit for that. There were a few grazes that were still sluggishly bleeding, so they got bandages. Orion's fingers got nearly covered, since his solid grip on the nail-embedded door frame had done damage to him as well as Mullin. Garcia also took this time to inform him about the effect of iron against supernatural creatures. Orion swore that he would never let go of his weapon.

Eventually, Reid convinced his teammates that they should restock their holy water supply. JJ, Rossi, and Wolfes went with him this time, and they carefully made their way to the bathroom they found Tanaka in.

* * *

Garcia wasn't sure how much more she could take. Learning that the _Supernatural_ books spoke all truths had been exhilarating, but now the horror of the situation had sunk in. Creatures hunted the night, another set of monsters on top of the ones they already chased. And now she was holed up in a makeshift shelter, protected by things she had never seen in action, surrounded by people who were barely holding it together and who didn't really know what was going on.

It had been a tense silence when the group had left in search of more people. Spike groaned in pain every so often, JJ paced up and down, Morgan kept adjusting his makeshift sling, and Quinn had taken to murmuring prayers, occasionally joined by Carr and Wolfes. They jumped at every little sound, waiting for the inevitable attack, but nothing had come. No demon, no witch, not even a fellow officer. She couldn't decide if that was messing with them even more than if they saw something.

It had been comforting when the group returned, especially when she heard that Reid had exorcised the demon. A visible tension had lifted from them all, and even though they fussed over injuries, everything was starting to look up.

Now Reid was gone again, and Garcia felt that much more unsafe. She checked the salt line and the devil's trap, making sure nothing had gotten smudged. Their bag of salt was still half full and there were still a couple of bottles with holy water still in them. And there was nothing to do but wait.

No more than five minutes after the group left, a clattering sound rang down the hallway. Everyone jolted up, and Garcia looked through the doorway in fear. Emory raised his gun, but there wasn't anyone in sight.

"I'm gonna check the adjacent hallway," he said, clapping Carr on the shoulder. "Keep an eye out here."

"Take someone with you, stupid!" she hissed at him, but he had already stepped over the salt line and was carefully making his way down the hall. Carr huffed and kept her gun raised, pointed at the floor behind Emory.

"Never go off on your own," she whispered with a glance back to Garcia. "Isn't that the first damn rule in any horror film?"

"I think the first rule is actually to never have sex," she replied, trying a nonchalant shrug. The other woman snorted and returned her full attention to the hallway. Emory had reached the entrance to the adjacent hallway, but when he whipped around to face it, there didn't appear to be anything there. He walked out of sight, his footsteps tapping a soft tune that let them know he was still moving.

Tension. Garcia stepped out of the doorway, leaning against the blackened window as they waited. Suddenly, a gunshot rang out. Everyone pulled out their guns at once, and Carr was already leaping over the salt line as she rushed to her teammate's aid. Hotch, Prentiss, and Orion rushed out after her as more gunshots sounded.

"Get her!" Garcia could hear Emory's voice calling out, a sign he was still alive. There were sounds of a scuffle, more gunshots, and Garcia needed them to come back before she had a heart attack. After what seemed like a century, Prentiss walked out, followed by Orion and Hotch escorting a handcuffed, squirming Vanessa Barsky. She had lost one shoe, and blood was seeping out of a hole in her foot. Carr emerged next, Emory leaning heavily against her while he limped on a bleeding leg.

Vanessa swore and jerked in her captors' arms. She paid no attention to her bleeding foot when she aimed for Hotch's ankles or Orion's kneecaps, though she couldn't help but scream in pain when her flailing swiped against the salt line. Nobody felt any sympathy for her. Carr helped Emory over the line and he leaned against the wall while she grabbed the bag and re-salted the line, adding an extra inch.

"What happened?" Garcia asked, watching as Vanessa was seated in the chair. Orion grabbed Spike's handcuffs and attached them to the pair already around Vanessa's wrists, then to the chair.

"She had hidden in a room," Emory grunted from the hallway. "Popped out and shot me. I tried getting her, but it's hard to get a decent shot when you're writhing in pain-" He gave a short, wry laugh. "-Then these guys came running, got her in the foot. She popped off a few more shots, but I don't think she hit anyone. Agent Hotchner tackled her to the ground and Orion slapped a pair of cuffs on her."

Quinn grabbed the first aid kit and hurried to Emory's side. She pulled out a pair of scissors and cut away at his pant leg, exposing the sluggishly bleeding bullet wound in his thigh. "Doesn't look like it hit anything major," she mumbled, her hand turning his leg while she craned her neck to find the exit wound. She pulled out a roll of bandages and began tightly wrapping up his leg.

Garcia turned away and sat down next to Morgan, her head automatically lowering to rest on his uninjured shoulder. He shifted so he could wrap an arm around her, pressing a quick kiss to the top of her head.

"It'll all be over soon, baby girl, don't you worry," he said, giving her a tight squeeze. Garcia smiled softly.

"I'll just feel a lot better once we're all together again."

* * *

Reid, Rossi, JJ, and Wolfes made it to the bathroom without any incident. JJ excused herself into a stall, citing that the discovery of horrible supernatural creatures always wrecked havoc on her bladder. Reid filled each of their empty bottles up with water from the sink, then individually blessed each bottle, marking them with the fat marker as he went. The water in the other bottles he wouldn't trust to drink, but tap water would be fine. It would be time consuming, but it was important that they had safe drinking water.

Three bottles in, they heard a rustling from outside the window. Rossi raised his gun and crept closer, peering outside. Reid paused, the fourth water bottle poised under the tap, as Rossi raised an eyebrow and looked downwards.

"What, exactly, are you doing?" he asked, almost conversationally.

Dean's head popped into view, startled by the sudden question.

"Who're you?" he demanded. Rossi just stepped aside and waved an arm towards Reid. Dean relaxed at the sight of a familiar face and gave him a nod. Reid could tell he was being told to come closer, so he left the bottle in the sink and walked over to the window. Behind him, Wolfes started fill up the bottle.

"How's it going on your end?" Reid asked, leaning forward to gently prod at the barrier. It felt softer, but it was still there. He glanced down and saw a small hole dug by Dean's feet. Sam was nowhere to be seen.

"We figured out how he did it," Dean sighed, running his fingers over his hair. "Bastard set up an altar at the witch's house, then buried five hex bags around the station in a five point star. We just need to find them all, burn 'em, then burn the altar. Cas is stationed at the altar, ready to destroy it, but Sam and I still have to get all the bags. Not easy when all the damn cops in the town are centred around the one area."

"You could always have someone create a new disturbance," Rossi suggested. "Get a friend to claim that there's an armed robbery, a hostage situation, something like that."

Reid nodded. "Some of the officers are sure to stay behind, but if you're convincing enough, most of them will leave for this new disturbance."

Dean looked like he was considering this. "I'm sure Chuck can think of something," he murmured. He glanced down at the hole under his feet and crouched down, continuing to paw through the dirt with his hands.

"How do you know the hex bag is there?" Reid asked. Dean shrugged.

"We've already found one, so we were able to roughly figure out where the others are, and this area has freshly turned dirt, so..." He gave another shrug.

Wolfes walked over with the remaining water bottles, now filled to the brim with water. Reid took one and dipped the rosary in, letting the cross settle on the bottom while he kept a grip on the beads. He quickly recited the blessing, then took the rosary out and marked the bottle. He handed it back to Wolfes, who capped it and handed the next to him.

As he blessed the water again, he noticed Dean looking at him with an impressed eye. "Damn," he whistled. "Thought you were a rookie."

"I am," Reid mumbled, looking down at the ground as he removed the rosary.

"He exorcised the demon," JJ said, her voice full of pride. Dean's eyebrows rose so fast, they could have flown off.

"One hell of a rookie," he said, grinning.

"I have an eidetic memory," Reid said, sounding almost defensive in his embarrassment. It was an impressive feat, and Dean seemed to approve, but he didn't want the man to stare at him and try to figure out why he was able to do these strange things so easily.

There was the sound of a match being struck, and Reid looked out the window to see that Dean had uncovered the hex bag and was burning it. The hunter pulled out a map and a pen – Reid's pen, he couldn't help but notice – and scratched out a spot on the map. He shoved the items back in his pocket, then pulled out his cell phone.

"Damn, no service," he mumbled. "Supernatural shit messes with electronics. Probably just need to get a little further away." He looked up at the group by the window. "Hang in there, it shouldn't be too much longer. " He gave JJ a quick wink before jogging away.

Reid double-checked that they had all the water bottles filled and marked, then motioned that they could go. Almost as soon as they left the bathroom, the loud and unmistakable sound of gunfire rang through the halls. They all jumped to attention and dashed through the hall, running back to the safe room, barely checking behind them for any danger as they rushed to check on their friends.

Emory greeted them with a short wave and a big grin as they jogged forwards. He was sitting propped against the wall a few feet away from the salt line, a white bandage strapped around his thigh.

"We caught the bitch," he said, pointing inside. Vanessa Barsky watched them from the chair, a snarl on her face.

"Oh yes, name-calling, let's resort to that," she said, her voice sickly sweet.

"You've killed our comrades," Orion hissed, his hand slamming the table. "You've used crazy-ass witchcraft to murder townsfolk who pissed you off. You don't really get a say anymore."

She glared at him and straightened her back. Her eyes dragged over everyone in the room as she spoke. "Just you wait. Mullin will come in here and kill you all. He'll set me free and I will make sure to find all of your families and slit... their... throats."

"Someone gag her, please," Spike groaned, rolling his eyes.

Reid walked into the room, unloading the water bottles onto the table and giving Quinn back her rosary. Rossi and JJ followed easily, walking straight to the other agents and updating them on their status while getting the full story of Vanessa's arrest.

"Emory, man, you should lay down in here," Wolfes said, patting the man's shoulder. "Elevate your leg."

Emory laughed lightly. "I don't wanna move. I can keep an eye on things here. Besides, the demon's been exorcised, the witch is in handcuffs. We're safe. We just gotta wait."

Reid tapped his finger against the top of his water bottle, eyes watching Vanessa Barsky. He hoped they were safe. But the way she kept eyeing the doorway left him uneasy.

Safety was a hard thing to ensure.


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

The room was tense and quiet, and even the knowledge that the Winchesters were going to free them soon wasn't able to calm Reid's nerves. Vanessa was oddly quiet. She was less smug than when she had first been brought into the station, but she was eerily calm for someone handcuffed to a chair.

He realized nobody had talked about the Winchesters coming, too distracted by Vanessa's arrest to remember. He shuffled his feet nervously, debating whether or not to tell his other team members, but he wasn't sure how much it would calm them down. Garcia would be ecstatic, especially for the chance to actually talk and touch them. Everyone else, however, he wasn't sure about. The most they knew about the Winchesters was their criminal record, and even the knowledge that they were on the good side and that all their crimes were either false or justified may not sway their tension.

So he kept his mouth shut, and volunteered to take watch behind the salt line. Rossi clapped him on the shoulder as he replaced him, murmuring a quick, "Keep up the good work, kid." Reid gave him a tight smile and turned to the hallway, bouncing on the balls of his feet. After a few minutes he took a swig from his marked bottle, lukewarm water relieving his dry mouth.

"You want any?" he asked Emory, keeping his voice quiet to avoid breaking the silence that had fallen. The steady pulse of sirens and conversation from outside had faded, leading Reid to believe that the Winchesters had succeeded in creating a diversion.

"Nah," Emory replied, shaking his head softly. "Not thirsty." Reid nodded and twisted the cap back on.

"How're you feeling?" he asked, shooting the other man's bandaged leg a quick look. He couldn't see any blood seeping through, and Emory didn't appear to be going into shock, but the man had still been shot.

Emory shrugged. "Sorta numb? I don't know. I don't feel like there's anything to worry about, but that could just be my endorphins acting up."

"Maybe you should relax in the room?" Reid suggested. "Elevate your leg?"

"I'm _fine_," Emory replied, his voice almost a growl. Reid stared at him from the corner of his eye, noting the way he spoke through his teeth. He looked fine, if a little angry, though his annoyance was quickly glossed over with an easy, reassuring smile.

Reid thought it was too bad he didn't know more about Emory's personality. He couldn't tell if this was normal for him or not.

"Man, he's just looking out for your well-being," Morgan said, having wandered over to the doorway. Reid offered him a quick smile and a glance at his teammate's makeshift sling.

Emory sighed, running a hand over his face. "I know, I know," he said. "I just don't like how long this is taking."

"You and me both, pal," Morgan laughed, and Reid bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from mentioning the Winchesters. There was just a niggling sensation at the back of his mind that told him it was a bad idea. He wasn't sure if Vanessa knew about the brothers and he didn't know how she would react if she did, but it probably wasn't well. She was calm at the moment, and he didn't want to mess that up.

Reid returned his attention to the hallway, feeling a small comfort from Morgan's steady presence just behind him. He could barely wait until they were free and safe. He wanted to get on the jet and curl up in his seat, falling asleep with his teammates around him. He wanted to write a letter to his mom about the case – though he would avoid any reference to the supernatural; she had enough to worry about without any mention of witches and demons, and he wouldn't want any of the doctors or nurses to read the letter and think he needed to live at the sanitarium.

"How's your shoulder?" Reid asked, turning to quickly look at Morgan. The man carefully shrugged his shoulders, his injured side visibly stiff and tense, as though he was testing his range of motion. It wasn't passable.

"Getting better," he said. "I'll just need to ice it and be careful. Once we get out of here," he added as an afterthought.

"Shouldn't be much longer," Reid said. "The barrier can't last forever."

"Shouldn't it vaporize since you killed that demon?" Morgan groaned, rolling his head. "That's what happens in movies."

He heard Emory snort unattractively from behind him. Reid simply wrinkled his nose. "I exorcised him, there's a difference. And really, there's a chance that the barrier kept him from entering Hell-"

"Wait," Morgan held up a hand and gave Reid a look. "Are you saying that there's a chance that demon is still prowling the station?"

"Yes," Reid said simply. "I thought that was obvious. We went and got extra holy water for a reason. Too much of my knowledge of the supernatural is theoretical; I haven't had much chance to test anything."

Morgan groaned, and Reid could hear small murmurs of apprehension drifting through the interrogation room. He was sure at least some of his teammates and the officers had thought the same, but actually hearing it voiced aloud by the person who knew more of what they were doing was certainly worrying. Reid wondered if he should have told everyone his theory earlier, or if that would have just caused more panic.

"So we have to watch out for him while we wait. No problem, we managed before."

Reid pursed his lips. "He probably won't use his old body, though."

"Excuse me?" Morgan sounded tired. He was tired of everything they had gone through, tired from wounds and mental stress. It was something they had never had to face before, and they all knew it would change everything. How many of them would go home and look through their books and the internet, gathering information about the various monsters? How many times would they look at a case and see something that made them think if was something more than human?

"Demons can switch hosts," Reid said, looking at Morgan over his shoulder with what he hoped was a sympathetic gaze as weary as the one Morgan held. "Since his old body was shot multiple times, Mullin would most likely have chosen a new vessel to possess."

Morgan groaned and let his head flop against the door frame, a soft thunk echoing down the hall. He paused, thinking, then looked at Reid. "You told us a word, yeah? To test for possession?"

Reid nodded. "Yeah," he said. "_Christo_."

A flinch.

Both of them spun to look at Emory, propped up against the wall with his teeth bared in irritation. The officer rolled his neck, then bent his injured leg until he could place his elbow on it. He propped his chin in his hand and finally raised his gaze to the two men in front of him.

His eyes flashed to an inky blackness.

"Demon!" Morgan roared, getting the attention of everyone in the room. "Emory's possessed!"

He tried to grab Reid so they could dash across the protection of the devil's trap, but the demon displayed the strength he had been hiding and kicked Morgan away, rising up to stand in one slick movement and grabbing Reid's face. His wide hands clenched the man's jaw shut, having learned his lesson from their last meeting.

"Took you long enough," Mullin purred out, his fingers curling dangerously close to the young man's eyeballs. Reid squirmed and grabbed his water bottle, struggling with trying to inconspicuously unscrew the cap.

"Let go of him," Hotch warned, his bottle open as he inched closer.

"In a moment," the demon said, his dark eyes flashing. "You know how much I love to divide and conquer."

In a quick movement, his hands flexed and tightened, and Reid felt an explosion of pain shoot through his mouth as the demon broke his jaw. He let out a muffled cry and Mullin threw him across the salt line. He rolled a few feet before he came to a stop and gave himself a moment to gather his senses. He heard his teammates' cries of shock and alarm. There was a sizzling and the sound of Emory's voice hissing in pain, so he could only assume Hotch had got him with the holy water. Vanessa was laughing, her voice triumphant and cocky.

His mouth had started to feel numb from the shock or endorphins, but he could already feel blood and drool pooling underneath his cheek. He could see one of his molars laying on the floor a few feet away, cracked from the force, and the teeth that were still in his mouth weren't lining up properly when he tried to close his mouth.

"E'orsasa'us eh," he mumbled, trying to start an exorcism, but his mouth couldn't form the words. He groaned and shoved his hands against the floor, hoping that he'd at least have the strength to stand. He had to pause when he realized he was still holding his water bottle – the lid had fallen off and the bottle was half empty, of course, and the rest of the water was seeped into his shirt – but he managed to get his bearings when another body went flying over him.

Tanaka's eyes caught his for a moment, before the other man landed on his head, his neck snapping upon impact and his body folding into a jumbled mess. Reid's breath caught in his throat as Mullin's cackling laughter bubbled up from Emory's throat.

"Little lambs up for slaughter," he purred. "You can get your hits in, but I'm stronger than you simple humans. I am greater than any force you have ever met, more bloodthirsty than any foe, and tireless. If I chose to, I could let you go. Let you think you've escaped. But I could hunt you down in the shadows, trailing after you in the dark as you look behind you, always knowing I'm there, but unable to do anything about it."

"Is monologue-ing a habit among demons?" Carr spat out, her bravado cut off as she was struck with an invisible force that slammed her against the wall.

Reid struggled to his feet, his mind racing to try and figure out what to do. The demon was pinned in that short area by the salt line in the hallway and the devil's trap in the doorway. But that doorway was the only area his teammates could exit to attack him, and the narrow path allowed only one person at a time. It would be easy for Mullin to pick them off, one by one, as they tried to attack. His telekinesis allowed him to attack from a distance as well, and Reid couldn't perform an intelligible exorcism.

He heard another cracking sound, and Quinn's voice crying out. He could only assume there was another death, but he forced himself to not think on it. His team seemed to be setting up a cycle, someone stepping up to the devil's trap and throwing their bottle of holy water at him. They would usually be thrown back, or someone else would feel the brunt of Mullin's powers, but the demon stayed where he stood, his face burning and mouth snarling, but mostly inconvenienced.

Vanessa's next round of triumphant crowing almost drowned out the sound of his cell phone ringing, but Reid still heard it. He blinked, glancing down at his pocket. He didn't pull his phone out, but he could see the hint of light emanating from the screen and he realized the barrier must have been brought down.

They just needed to hang on, he realized, just until the Winchesters came in and used their knowledge to save them. They needed to trap Mullin.

The demon was distracted, his arm stretched out, his hand slowly turning, and the shouting voices of his teammates drowned out the slapping of Reid's sneakers as he dashed forwards. He ran over the salt line, not caring that the drag of his toe broke the line. Mullin didn't notice him until the skinny genius crashed into him, wrapping his arms around the other man and using his momentum to drag him a few feet until he struck an invisible force.

Reid let go and stumbled forward, falling to his knees for a second before he spun around, grabbing for the bag of salt. Mullin struggled, but he was pinned in place.

"What is this?" he demanded, head whipping around, looking below and above. Reid got to his feet as his team started to file out of the room. He patted the wall next to the blacked-out window, the slight shine of marker barely visible against the paint on the other side.

Everyone else walked out of the room, though Garcia and Quinn hung back, and Spike, Orion, Carr, and Prentiss were absent. JJ quickly threw some water at Mullin, then scooted over to Reid's side as the demon clutched his face.

"He opened Vanessa's handcuffs," she said as Hotch and Morgan joined them. "Prentiss is keeping her under wraps."

Reid nodded, filled with relief that all his team had survived. They were bruised, heavily so, but they were alive. JJ's eyes looked at his jaw, her face one of worry, and Reid wondered just how bad it looked.

"I'm fin'," he said quietly. He pulled his still ringing phone from his pocket, checking the name. "'An youu speag oo Shug?" It was frustrating not being able to enunciate. JJ raised an eyebrow, but took the phone.

"Hello," she said. Reid could barely hear Chuck's voice on the other line.

"_Uhh, Dr. Reid?_"

"I'm his coworker, Jennifer Jareau."

"_Oh, well, I just wanted to let you guys know that, um, they got the barrier down. So. Yeah._"

"Thank you very much," she replied, relief coating her words. She hung up and gave Reid back his phone. "The barrier's down," she told everyone. There was a collective sigh of relief among the humans, but Mullin snorted.

"A minor inconvenience," he said, but his voice betrayed his anger. Reid could tell that he was confused, that he didn't know who they had on the outside helping them.

He could hear footsteps now. He didn't know if they would belong to the brothers, but it was most likely someone from the outside, having found out they could enter the building. Everyone glanced down the hallway, intent on seeing who it was, when Mullin moved his hands, one of them free from the binds of the devil's trap. A concussive force burst outwards, knocking the group off their feet. Reid fell back into Morgan's chest, cushioning his fall, yet still jarring his jaw. He could feel Morgan wincing beneath him as his shoulder smacked into the ground.

Wolfes bounced back the quickest, rolling to his feet and throwing his holy water on the demon, who tried to recoil. His back hit the invisible barrier of the devil's trap as he snarled and cursed at them, vowing to do terrible things to their mothers. He was devolving, Reid realized. Mullin had likely never encountered anyone who was able to stand up to him, much less trap him like they had done. He had walked into this situation looking for some entertainment, and it had gone horribly wrong for him. A ragtag group of humans who had next to zero experience with the supernatural had exorcised him from his original body and trapped his second.

Mullin would use the last of his powers to kill and maim every one of them, then escape when the chance arrived, leaving Vanessa behind. Their interactions had certainly suggested that there was no real love there, endearing nicknames used mockingly and as cover for their real relationship. She wasn't strong enough to throw him under the bus, but he wouldn't hesitate to save his own skin.

Reid rolled off of Morgan, scurrying to his feet like everyone else. Mullin was glancing at various people, his hands twitching as he pushed them back, creating a second perimeter around himself. The devil's trap seemed to be suppressing his powers enough that he couldn't snap necks anymore, but he was still dangerous.

The footsteps got louder, and all eyes watched warily as three men turned the corner, looking carefully at the group before walking towards them. Reid exhaled deeply, a great sense of relief coursing through his veins as he saw Sam, Dean, and Castiel stride forwards. Dean's face broke into a grin and he locked eyes with Reid as he spoke.

"The cavalry is here."


	13. Chapter 13

Hey everybody. Sorry it's taken me so long to update. I had to deal with an essay worth most of my mark, prepping for a con, and some good old fashioned procrastination. Ugh. But this is the last chapter before the epilogue, and I promise to have that up within the week, so we're almost done! Hope you enjoy the end of this story.

* * *

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Most of the people standing around didn't realize the significance of the three men walking towards them, but Reid could see that Mullin knew. The demon's eyes widened and flashed black, his lips pulling back in a snarl as he unconsciously shifted backwards. He was angry and afraid, and he knew his chances had dropped next to zero. They would need to finish him off quickly, before he did anything drastic, and they would have to try and save Emory while they were at it.

"Reid – woah!" Dean whistled, his eyebrows raised. "You look like shit."

Sam elbowed him and they walked up to the group, their eyes trained on the man in the middle. "This is the demon, I take it?" Sam asked, gripping his knife a little tighter.

"Emory's still alive in there," Garcia said quickly, looking up at the brothers with shining eyes.

"No problem," Dean said with a flash of a smile. "Just a quickie exorcism will do."

Mullin chose that moment to let out a burst of power, throwing everyone off their feet again. Reid tumbled into the wall, no coworkers to cushion his fall this time. His jaw hit the floor and he was momentarily distracted by a fresh blooming of pain. His vision darkened, blackness creeping up around the edges, but he forced himself to stay awake. When he had regained his senses, he could hear Mullin ranting.

"-let anyone of you simple _monkeys_ defeat me! I am a greater being! I am-"

"Full of hot air!" Dean shouted, rolling to his feet. Beside him, Castiel helped Quinn to her feet, but was soon blasted away by the demon trying to take out the bigger threats. Mullin was practically prowling in place, though he kept his eyes on the trio.

Reid crawled to his knees, head still swimming, as Mullin used his powers to keep everyone at a distance. Dean and Sam kept starting up the exorcism, but Mullin would push them all off their feet. Reid groaned and looked to his side, trying to figure out what they could do to get rid of Mullin while keeping Emory safe. He wasn't sure what Castiel's angelic powers would do to Emory, whether his mind would be saved or not, but it looked like Mullin wasn't giving them a chance to find out. Castiel would barely be on his feet for a second before the demon would send out another telekinetic shock wave.

He saw Morgan moving out of the corner of his eye and looked at him quick enough to see the other man heaving the bag of salt up as he stood and dashed forward. With Mullin's back to him, Morgan was easily able to dump the salt over the demon's head, yanking the bag down until it covered his neck and muffled his screams.

The Winchesters didn't miss the opportunity. Sam began the exorcism, practically yelling the words as Mullin screamed and writhed and tried to claw the bag off his head. The small confines of the devil's trap and the burns from the salt and the holy water the officers were now throwing at him kept him from freeing himself, and it wasn't long before Sam finished his exorcism and black smoke poured out from under the bag.

The group held their breath as the smoke dissipated into the ceiling, crackling lightning as it went, and Emory's body staggered out from the trap, a thick line of crimson running down his leg. Wolfes dashed forward and caught the other man before he could fall down and held him against his chest.

"Emory?" he asked quietly, his soft voice carrying over the tense silence. He was met with a muffled groan.

"I feel like shit..." Emory mumbled, his hand blindly reaching up to tug the salt bag off his head. His dark hair was almost completely white, and his face was pale under the salt dust. Without the demon to stem the wound, the bullet hole in his leg had begun bleeding, but everyone was relieved to see he was still alive and relatively well.

Nearly everyone sagged in relief, the feeling that it was over lifting a weight off their shoulders. Reid struggled to his feet, JJ helping him up and checking out his wounds. Her own face was bruised, the beginnings of a black eye swelling against her left eye, and her lip was cut, but on a whole she seemed relatively unscathed. Most of the group's bruises would be over their bodies, their torsos, hidden by clothes, it was the other wounds they had to worry about. Spike's twisted leg, Emory's bullet wound, his own broken jaw, not to mention the high chances of internal bleeding from all the times they had been thrown around.

It seemed that others had the same idea, because Quinn and Hotch were walking down the hallway, towards the faint voices of the officers from outside. Hotch was already on his cell phone, telling someone to get some ambulances down to the station straight away.

"Thank you so much," Garcia said, staring up at the Winchester brothers with wonder. Dean grinned and nodded while Sam gave a gentle smile.

"We're happy to help," he said. "I'll admit, we were curious when Chuck mentioned an old rescue of ours." His eyes flickered over to Reid. "So you've been keeping this lot alive?"

Reid flushed and shrugged, but JJ squeezed his shoulder and answered for him.

"We'd all be dead if it wasn't for him. He memorized a blessing for holy water, and performed an exorcism, and set up all our defences."

"How long have you been hunting?"

Reid's eyes widened and he shook his head, then stopped because that was jiggling his jaw around too much. JJ looked at him curiously while Garcia chimed in.

"Oh, no, no," she said, scooting over to Reid's other side and wrapping his arm in a hug. "Our boy's never done this before."

"Really?" Dean asked, his eyebrows rising high. "Damn, I knew you were a rookie, but I hadn't realized how new you were."

Reid shrugged, wishing he could actually contribute more to the conversation than some non-verbal cues.

"All he did, he learned from reading your books," Garcia added, and Dean groaned, rubbing his face with one hand.

"Those things," Sam muttered, his face squished into a wince, but he still looked a little amused.

The conversation was interrupted by a loud shout from within the interrogation room and the group dashed inside to find Prentiss kneeling over Vanessa's limp body, her hand bloody and a bite mark on her exposed forearm. The witch's nose was tilted at a wrong angle and blood flowed freely down her cheek.

"She _bit_ me," Prentiss said incredulously, wincing as she looked at her arm.

Reid glanced around the room, seeing Orion sit next to Spike against the wall, his hand placed on the other man's shoulder as they talked in low tones. Spike looked dangerously pale, the shock reaching critical levels. Carr lay against the wall opposite the door, her eyes wide and staring into nothing, with blood caked in her hair and dripping down her face. People glanced at her every so often, as though trying to decide if they should leave her alone or arrange her in a more dignified way. They left her alone.

"How are we supposed to explain this whole thing?" JJ asked to no one in particular, though Dean shrugged.

"Blame the witch? Say she went on some crazy rampage?"

"Nobody will believe that she had the strength to snap _one_ man's neck, let alone numerous police officers'," Rossi said, raising his eyebrow. Dean gave another shrug.

"I'm not the one who deals with the aftermath," he replied. Sam tapped him on the shoulder.

"Speaking of which, we should really get going. More police are going to be here any minute, and we're still wanted."

"You're right. Cas?" Dean turned to the angel, who nodded and stepped forward.

"Wait," Morgan said. The three stopped to look at him. "Thank you. For today, and for saving Reid back then." The other agents nodded and murmured their agreement while the three looked back over at Reid.

"That's our job," Dean said. "It's always a lot better when we get there in time."

The sound of hurried footsteps was echoing down the hallway, so Cas quickly reached out and touched both brothers' foreheads, vanishing in a blink of an eye. It was only moments later that a pair of paramedics hurried in, carrying a stretcher. After some quick cataloguing of wounds, they loaded Spike onto the stretcher and carried him out, telling the rest of them that there was another ambulance coming and to get themselves checked out in a hospital as soon as possible.

Wolfes passed Emory off to Rossi while he dragged Vanessa's unconscious body up. Her hands were already handcuffed together, so he simply threw her over his shoulder to take her to a holding cell. The rest of the team slowly shuffled out of the room, passing over the devil's trap and leaving it behind.

* * *

The hospital was busy that day, with numerous officers and agents brought in for treatment, not to mention the corpses that had to be brought down to the morgue. They had found that some other officers had survived the demon's attack, having hidden themselves away until a group of officers had searched the building.

Reid stood awkwardly in the bathroom, his hands shoved into his pockets to avoid touching his face. He had already been treated, his broken jaw wired shut, his strangled neck double-checked for any injury to his windpipe. He had been cleared with only the promise to consume liquids or very soft food for the next six to eight weeks, but he still looked like a mess. They had wiped away the blood and drool, but his chin and cheeks were a mass of dark bruises, and when he took off his shirt he could see the same colours smattering his torso.

Still, he considered himself lucky, and he gently tugged his shirt back on, exiting the bathroom. Morgan was there, his arm in a solid sling. The man gave him a smile and looped his free arm around Reid's shoulders as they walked.

"Hey there, pretty boy," he said. "How's it going?"

Reid gave a soft grunt in reply. Morgan just grinned.

"It's going to be something, not hearing your voice for the next weeks," he teased. Reid rolled his eyes. Morgan gave a soft laugh and patted the other man's shoulder, bringing his hand back to his side. "Rossi's visiting Knightly, giving him an update on what happened."

Reid gave a small nod, then asked a question through his trapped teeth that sounded enough like "The others?" that Morgan answered.

"Everyone's been wrapped up and given plenty of prescriptions, though Officer Spike's got the worst of it. The doctor's say there's too much nerve damage for him to ever walk right again. Though he told me that him and Orion didn't want to go back to the force after that anyway, so it's just the perfect excuse.

"JJ and Hotch are doing a press conference right now, saying how the whole incident was done by Barsky and that Asian guy Mullin was in first," Morgan sighed. "We don't know who he is yet, but they're saying he snuck in and started killing people, since he's built enough that snapping necks wouldn't be a stretch. Nobody's saying anything about the barrier, since not a lot of civilians saw that, but the police officers have been told the truth. Not that they all believe it, but..." Morgan shrugged.

They turned a corner, keeping silent as they passed a nurse, and walked into the waiting room, where Prentiss and Garcia were sitting. Prentiss sat up straight at the sight of them while Garcia bounced to her feet and rushed over, cooing over their injuries. The three of them sat down and Prentiss informed them that they were to wait for Rossi to rejoin them, then go down to the hotel.

"Hotch and JJ will meet up with us there, and then we'll fly back to Quantico," she said.

"So soon?" Garcia asked, a little surprised, but Reid could hear in her voice she wasn't unhappy about it. But it was understandable that anyone would want to leave after such a traumatizing experience.

Prentiss shrugged and a silence fell over them, only broken when Rossi walked up. They all rose to their feet and started walking towards the exit. They all piled into an SUV that had been brought around for them, with Rossi in the driver's seat, and they drove off.

"I know nobody would believe us," Prentiss said softly, a few minutes into the drive. "But I don't like how much we're lying to the people."

"But there's a whole network of hunters out there," Garcia said as reassuring as she could make it. "They're always travelling around to make sure these things get killed. It's not just the Winchesters!"

Prentiss hummed in response, mollified, but not completely at peace with that. They arrived at the hotel and parked. Reid hopped out of the vehicle first, opening the door for the others, but he peered inside when he heard Garcia's surprised gasp.

Chuck Shurley was standing up from a chair off to the side, a small folder in hand. He waved nervously to the group as Reid walked over to stand beside Garcia. The writer shuffled over, chancing glances at the other agents who were watching with raised eyebrows and questions in their eyes.

"Hello, Chuck!" Garcia chirped, smiling excitedly.

"Hey guys," Chuck said, coming to a stop in front of them. "I, uh, just wanted to check on you. Sam and Dean popped by to let me know the demon was stopped, but they didn't really give me any details. I think they're still mad about the whole publishing thing... Uh, but anyway," He opened the folder, holding a signed piece of paper towards Garcia. "Becky mentioned I should give you an autograph, since you seemed to be such a fan, so..."

Garcia smiled and took the piece of paper happily. "Thank you!"

Chuck smiled and held a smaller piece of paper towards Reid. "I wasn't sure if you'd like the same thing, but Sam suggested something. You like reading, right?"

Reid took the piece of paper and looked down, a small smile tugging at his lips as he read the name _Bobby Singer_. There was an address and a phone number there. Reid glanced up at Chuck, who smiled and shrugged.

"They promised to put in a good word."

Reid smiled and nodded, and Chuck grinned.

"Cool. So, um, I'll just go. Don't want to hold you up or anything. It was nice meeting you," he said, nodding his head and giving everyone a short wave before walking out of the lobby, passing Hotch and JJ as they walked in.

"Alright everybody," Hotch said, striding towards the group. "Let's get our bags and go."

Reid hurried along to his room, stopping only to show Garcia what Chuck had given him. Her face glowed as she realized what it was, and Reid felt almost anxious to return to Quantico. He was sure to get some time off for medical leave, but it shouldn't be too hard to get on a plane during that time and fly to South Dakota.

He'd be ready. Next time, he would make sure everyone was ready.


	14. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Outside of her office was loud – people walking by with their stiff shoes, occasionally stopping for a conversation – but inside JJ's workspace was only the shuffling of papers as she sifted through report after report. She had a small stack of the highest risk cases to her left, and a large stack of papers she had yet to through on her right.

JJ sighed, rubbing at the corner of her eye as she closed another folder, slipping it away from either pile. She took another folder from the unread file and began flipping through it, grimacing a little as she saw the photos attached. She paused as she continued reading, slowing down as she registered the bodies, the method of death.

Suddenly, she stood up and left her office, folder in hand. She strode past the people outside having conversations, and instead walked right through the bullpen, up to Reid's desk. Seeing her arrival out of the corner of his eye, Reid looked up and smiled at her.

"Hey," he said. "How's it going?" His eyes caught the folder in her hand and he raised an eyebrow. "A new case?"

"I don't think so. Not for us, at least," she said, moving to hold the folder out for Reid to grab. "I was hoping you could take a look at it, make sure I'm not just imagining things."

Reid understood what she was talking about, so he didn't waste any time in taking the folder and reading through it. Numerous bodies were piling up in Willows, California, and every single one was drained of blood. The victims all had numerous bite marks, sometimes even having bits of flesh torn off, with a set of teeth akin to some kind of animal. Most of the drained blood was nowhere to be found, and the small puddles that were at the scene appeared to have been smeared and licked up.

Reid read a little further before nodding. "Sounds like a vampire," he said quietly. JJ sighed softly.

"I thought so," she said, and it was hard to tell if she was more worried or relieved at that information.

Reid smiled reassuringly at her. "I'll give Bobby a call, see if he can't-" He was cut off by the sound of his phone ringing, so he fished it out of his pocket and flipped it open.

"Speak of the devil?" JJ asked with a chuckle, while Reid just shrugged. She left the folder with him and returned to her office as Reid answered his phone.

"Hello?"

"_Hey, bookworm,"_ Dean's voice came from the other side of the phone. _"I got a question for you."_

"What is it?"

"_How many monsters out there can turn people to stone or kill them with a glance?"_

Reid furrowed his brow. "Well, the most prominent examples would be a gorgon, a basilisk, and a cockatrice."

"_Can any of those fly? We got a witness to one of the deaths, and she says she saw something flying away."_

"Then it would probably be a cockatrice. They're commonly depicted as a two-legged dragon with a rooster's head, and they certainly have functional wings."

"_Awesome. Any idea how we can kill it?"_

"The most certain way would be to turn its gaze upon itself by using a mirror, but there are also legends of it dying upon hearing a rooster crow. However, I came upon a reference in one of Bobby's books, and it looks like that simply irritates or weakens it. If you can acquire a weasel, it's also said that those are immune to the cockatrice's powers."

There was a small silence. _"So we have to make it look in a mirror, yeah?"_

"Yes."

"_Awesome, thanks. I know Bobby's out on a hunt himself right now, so I totally appreciate this."_

"It's not a problem," Reid reassured him. "And while I have you on the line, we got a case that looks like a hunting job."

"_Where is it?"_

"Willows, California. It looks like a coven of vampires."

Dean hummed softly. _"We're not too far off. Once we get rid of this cockatrice thing, we'll swing by and clear that up."_

"Thanks," Reid said, smiling even though Dean couldn't see him. "We really appreciate it."

"_No problem,"_ Dean said, and Reid could hear the grin in his voice. _"You guys are one of us now."_

They hung up and Reid tossed the folder in the small recycling bin under his desk. He sat back in his chair and let his eyes wander, strolling over the other members of his team sitting at their own desks. Garcia's door was open, and he could see Hotch through the window, and Morgan was looking at him with a raised eyebrow, so Reid just smiled and returned to his work.

They had never been a part of anything small, but now they were part of something so much bigger. They were connected to a community of hunters, helping save even more people than just their job at the BAU. Really, they were hunters themselves.

They were one of them.

THE END

* * *

And that's it, folks. I might end up making some more sequels to this series, but (if I do) I won't be focusing on them for a while. I have some other stories I want to pump out, so look forward to those! Hope you enjoyed the ride!


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